Brief laser-light treatment may significantly improve effectiveness of influenza vaccines

Pretreating the site of intradermal vaccination – vaccine delivered into the skin rather than to muscles beneath the skin – with a particular wavelength of laser light may substantially improve vaccine effectiveness without the adverse effects of chemical additives currently used to boost vaccine efficacy. In the open-access journal PLOS ONE, investigators from Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center in the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Division of Infectious Diseases report that a one-minute dose of near-infrared laser light significantly improved the effectiveness of intradermal influenza vaccination in a mouse model – increasing both immune system activity and the animals’ survival. “We discovered that low-power near-infrared laser light effectively and reproducibly increases vaccine efficacy as well as currently approved adjuvants and is effective for influenza vaccination,” explains Mark Poznansky, MB ChB, PhD, director of the MGH Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center and senior author of the report. “Many of the adjuvants currently in use or...