Field Trial of Maternal Influenza Immunization in Asia (Mothers'Gift)

Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Status and phase: Completed; Phase 3

Conditions: Influenza Human

Treatments: Biological: influenza vaccine; Biological: saline placebo

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT01034254

Mothers'Gift 241 Field Trial

Details and patient eligibility

About

This project is designed to assess the efficacy of immunizing women during pregnancy with influenza vaccine on the health of these women during their pregnancy and for 6 months post-partum as well as on the health of their newborn infants during the first 6 months of life. It will be conducted in Sarlahi District in southern Nepal, a rural area where a number of large scale randomized trials have been conducted over the past 20 years.

Full description

This is a community-based, placebo-controlled, individually randomized trial in trial among women who are or who become pregnant in 9 Village Development Committees in Sarlahi District, Nepal. The study population for this trial will include all women who are identified as pregnant with gestational age between 17 and 34 weeks gestation during a 12-month period in 9 Village Development Committees (VDC) of Sarlahi District, Nepal. The 9 VDCs include: Dhungre Khola, Karmaiya, Hariaun, Ghurkauli, Sasapur, Netraganj, Lalbandi, Jabdi, and Raniganj.

The vaccine that will be given will be the most current vaccine at the time of subject enrollment. That is, for women enrolled after October in either study cohort, the vaccine will be switched to the newly available vaccine for that year.

The control group will be placebo (saline injection). The justification for the use of a placebo injection in this trial is as follows: There is only one trial (Bangladesh) that demonstrates efficacy of influenza vaccination in pregnancy on perinatal outcomes and respiratory morbidity in early infancy. One of the issues with that study is that it was not placebo controlled. The "control" in that study was adult pneumococcal vaccine. It could be that the Bangladesh study underestimated the impact of influenza vaccine because the mothers and infants receive some indirect protection from the pneumococcal vaccine. In addition, influenza vaccine is not part of national policy or recommendations in Nepal at the current time and Ministry of Health officials are very interested in the results of our study as they consider their immunization program expansion over the next few years.

Enrollment: 3,693 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 15 to 45 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• mid to late pregnancy

Exclusion criteria

• do not intend to deliver in the study area
• previous pregnancy in this study

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Double Blind

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3,693 participants in 2 patient groups, including a placebo group

influenza vaccine

Experimental group

Description:

Pregnant women assigned to the intervention group will receive one dose of seasonal influenza vaccine at the time of enrollment. The vaccine that will be given will be the current seasonal influenza recommended vaccine at the time of enrollment.

Treatment:

Biological: influenza vaccine

saline placebo

Placebo Comparator group

Description:

Pregnant women assigned to the control group will receive one dose of placebo (normal saline).

Treatment:

Biological: saline placebo