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Science Flu shots for the elderly: Does it help?
Science Flu shots for the elderly: Does it help? | Flu shots for the elderly: Does it help? |
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| Written by William Atkins | |
| Monday, 15 October 2007 | |
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Nichol, of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and her fellow collaborators searched the medical records of thousands of people in the United States and Canada between the years of 1990 and 2000. They compared who had or had not received flu shots, and recorded who had been hospitalized or died during the winter flu season. Nichol’s team performed this study because many past studies have not shown a consistent positive correlation between getting a flu shot and fewer hospital visits and lower death rates—a result that would seem to be true but one that had not been proven in the past. They found that the subjects who received flu shots during the winter flu season were about 25% less likely (than unvaccinated subjects) to be hospitalized for flu or pneumonia during that winter; and about 50% less likely to die (than unvaccinated subjects) of any cause during the flu season. In addition, the researchers checked to see if there was any difference in hospitalization during the summer (outside of the flu season) in the subjects that received vaccinations and those that didn’t. They found there was no difference between the two groups of people. Thus, the collaborators did find a positive correlation between getting a flu shot and fewer hospital stays and lower death rates. This result is very important because of the long duration of the study (ten years) and the large number of elderly people as subjects (about 70,000 people). Although this study does not definitely prove that flu shots help elderly people to minimize their chances of the flu and pneumonia and to reduce the chance of death, it does help to validate the effectiveness of flu shots. With more and more people entering their senior years of life, it is important that a definite consensus be reached on flu shots. The results were reported by Nichol’s team in the October 4, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. {moscomment}
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