CDC Studies Find Flu Vaccine Saves Lives
- Details
- Published on Friday, 27 October 2017 16:18
CDC Study Finds Flu Vaccine Saves Children’s Lives
A new CDC study published today in Pediatrics is the first of its kind to show that flu vaccination significantly reduced a child’s risk of dying from influenza. The study, which looked at data from four flu seasons between 2010 and 2014, found that flu vaccination reduced the risk of flu-associated death by half (51 percent) among children with underlying high-risk medical conditions and by nearly two-thirds (65 percent) among healthy children. The study findings underscore the importance of the recommendation by CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics that all children 6 months and older get an annual flu vaccine.
Researchers estimated how effective the vaccine was at preventing flu-related deaths by comparing the vaccination status of the children who died from flu to comparison groups of children. The comparison groups were obtained from two national surveys and a database of commercial insurance claims.
“Every year CDC receives reports of children who died from the flu. This study tells us that we can prevent more of these deaths by vaccinating more,” said Brendan Flannery, PhD, lead author and epidemiologist in the Influenza Division. “We looked at four seasons when we know from other studies that the vaccine prevented flu illness, and we found consistent protection against flu deaths in children.”
During the study period, 358 laboratory-confirmed, flu-associated child deaths were reported to CDC. Of the reported pediatric deaths with known vaccination status (291), only one in four children (26 percent) had been vaccinated.
Since the 2004-2005 season, flu-related deaths in children reported to CDC during regular flu seasons ranged from 37 (during 2011-2012) to 171 (during 2012-2013). During the current flu season, 61 pediatric deaths have been reported to CDC as of March 25, 2017. More information about pediatric deaths is available in an interactive format at https://gis.cdc.gov/GRASP/Fluview/PedFluDeath.html.
New CDC Study Shows Flu Vaccine Reduces Severe Outcomes in Hospitalized Patients
May 25, 2017 – A new study in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID) showed that flu vaccination reduced deaths, intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, ICU length of stay, and overall duration of hospitalization among hospitalized flu patients. This study is an important first step in better understanding whether flu vaccines can reduce severe flu outcomes even if they fail to protect against infection.
The study looked at hospitalized flu patients during 2013-2014 and compared patients who had been vaccinated to those who had not. The observed benefits were greatest among people 65 years of age and older, which is notable because people in this age group are at increased risk of serious flu complications and have the highest hospitalization rate among all age groups.
The study found that vaccinated adults were 52-79% less likely to die than unvaccinated flu-hospitalized patients. In other words, an unvaccinated hospitalized flu patient was 2 to 5 times more likely to die than someone who had been vaccinated.
Additional benefits were observed in terms of reducing ICU admissions for several age groups. For example, vaccinated adults 18-49 years of age as well as adults 65 years of age and older hospitalized from flu were 37% less likely to be admitted to the ICU than those who were not vaccinated. In terms of length of ICU stay, vaccinated adults 50-64 years of age as well as adults 65 years of age and older admitted to an ICU with flu illness were more likely to have a shorter stay in the ICU than those who were not vaccinated. Furthermore, vaccinated adults 50-64 years of age and adults 65 years of age and older were more likely to be discharged from the hospital earlier than those hospitalized with the flu who had not been vaccinated.
Researchers did not observe a difference between length of hospital stay or length of ICU stay among people 18 to 49 years of age. The authors discussed whether a larger sample size may have been needed to measure this outcome in this age group.
In the past 10 years, CDC and its public health partners have published many vaccine effectiveness studies that assess how well the seasonal flu vaccine protects against flu illness. Less research has been done to determine whether vaccination might reduce severity of illness among people who are vaccinated but still get sick. There is some data available that supports this conclusion. This study adds to that data, but more research on this topic is warranted. CDC plans to continue to monitor and research the benefits of flu vaccination against severe disease outcomes in future studies to explore this important public health issue. This study is available online from the CID website at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28525597.
