Health Care

FDA makes flu vaccine recommendations after scheduling meeting of advisers

by TheHill.com 03/14/25 01:09 PM ET

FILE - A sign for the Food and Drug Administration is displayed outside their offices in Silver Spring, Md., on Dec. 10, 2020. Makers of thousands of medical tests that have long escaped oversight will have to show that they deliver accurate results, under a government rule vigorously opposed by the testing industry. The regulation finalized Monday, April 29, 2024 brings tests developed by laboratories under control of the FDA, which has warned that the multibillion-dollar industry poses growing risks to patients. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has made a recommendation for a flu virus strains to be targeted in the 2025-2026 season.

The strains were selected following a meeting of experts from the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Defense Department. The FDA recommended a trivalent formulation of three different strains for egg-based influenza vaccines and a separate combination of three strains for recombinant-based vaccines.

“Today, the FDA made recommendations to vaccine manufacturers for the virus strains to be used in influenza (flu) vaccines for the 2025-2026 U.S. flu season following a thorough and comprehensive review of U.S. and global surveillance data,” the FDA said in a statement Thursday.

This meeting occurred after the FDA canceled a vaccine advisory meeting where members were slated to discuss influenza vaccine strains.

The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) normally meets every March to determine strains to be targeted. The meeting was scheduled for March 13, with this inter-agency meeting appearing to take the place of the VRBPAC meeting.

Last year, VRBPAC recommended that all U.S. flu vaccines be trivalent instead of the four-component vaccines that had previously been employed. This was due to one strain not having been detected globally since 2020.