Flu vaccine does not help kids stricken with influenza stay out of the hospital. Instead, according to a new study headed by Avni Joshi, M.D. of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, it actually puts them at three times the risk of being hospitalized when compared with kids who have not received the vaccine.
The new study, Dr. Joshi told Science Daily, was aimed at evaluating the effectiveness of the flu vaccine (trivalent inactivated flu vaccine, or TIV) in children. Dr. Joshi said asthmatic children were of particular concern. The relative benefit of the vaccine is of paramount importance in light of the recommendation of the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics to vaccinate all children between the ages of six months and 18 years every year, a recommendation that is echoed by the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program.
The Mayo Clinic study spanned eight consecutive flu seasons and involved 263 children aged six months to 18 years. All of the children had laboratory-confirmed influenza between 1996 and 2006. Researchers verified which children had or had not received the vaccine, which children were asthmatics, and which children had to be hospitalized with flu-related illnesses.
The study showed that children who had been vaccinated had three times the risk of hospitalization of children who had not been vaccinated. Asthmatic children who received the vaccine had a “significantly” higher risk of being hospitalized than asthmatic children who had not received it. No other factors, such as the severity of asthma, appeared to have an effect on the risk of being hospitalized.
Dr. Joshi said the findings do not implicate the flu vaccine as the cause of hospitalizations, but they do, in his words, “raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine.”
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