Researchers at Vanderbilt University have found a new way to “dissect” the human immune response following influenza vaccination.

Respiratory viruses, not bacterial infections, are the most commonly detected causes of community-acquired pneumonia in children, according to new research released Feb. 26 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The Vanderbilt Vaccine Research Program has received a major contract from the National Institutes of Health to continue its work as one of the nation’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Units.

Vanderbilt’s Vaccine and Treatment Evaluation Unit (VTEU) is one of nine U.S. sites funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to test the effectiveness of a vaccine to protect against the H7N9 bird flu that emerged in China this spring.

After more than a month in and out of the hospital with her daughter, Kynslee, Kristen Allen felt she was at the end of her rope. Last spring, the nearly 2-year-old Columbia girl developed diarrhea that wouldn’t go away after taking antibiotics for repeated ear infections.

A worrisome new avian influenza virus, called H7N9, emerged this spring in Eastern China.

A national vaccine surveillance program that Vanderbilt University is a part of has identified a significant shift in the most common cause of childhood diarrhea.