Research

Pneumococcal vaccines have been used in the United States for over a decade. A number of questions remain about which risk groups benefit most from the direct and indirect benefits of the vaccine, what would be the optimal vaccination strategy for adults, and whether the emergence of novel clones could undermine vaccine impact.

Infections with influenza virus increase the risk for developing bacterial infections, particularly those cause by pneumococcus. We are interested in understanding what risk groups are most affected by these interactions, which bacterial strains are most affected, and the implications of these interactions for pneumococcal vaccine impact.

In collaboration with Magnús Gottfreðsson and colleagues in Denmark and the UK, we studied the seasonal epidemic patterns of influenza in Iceland over the past 90 years and considered the impacts of Iceland’s increasing global connections on the timing of the annual epidemics.