Do flu shots really cut the risk of seniors dying in the wintertime in half?
Nonsense, say researchers, including Dr. Lisa Jackson, a senior investigator at Group Health in Seattle, who are questioning an often-repeated reason for seniors 65 and up to get annual flu shots.
But that doesn’t mean seniors shouldn’t bother lining up for the shots every year, Jackson said Monday.
“I would say go ahead and get the flu shot,” she said. It can help prevent people, including seniors, from the getting the flu, she said, which can sicken people for several weeks or send them to the hospital.
What researchers were trying to show, she said, is the assumption that the shot isn’t as effective in preventing wintertime deaths among seniors.
The report comes just as county health departments, senior centers and health clinics are ready to begin their annual flu shot programs.
Jackson was part of a team of scientists that took a questioning look at what flu shots do — and don’t do — for seniors. She was joined by researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease the National Institutes of Health.
Their report is being published today in Lancet Infectious Diseases, a British medical journal.
The results of about 25 scientific studies claim that the flu shot reduces the number of wintertime deaths in seniors, Jackson said. “On face value, those results are not plausible,” she said. “You have this feeling, ‘How could so many studies be wrong?’ “
After taking a careful look at the studies for about four years, the researchers concluded the claims were “too good to be true,” Jackson said.
In fact, in the medical journal report, the researchers say: “We find it peculiar that the claims that influenza vaccination can prevent half — or more — of all winter deaths in elderly people have not been vigorously debated.”
One of the key points that brought them to their position: While the number of seniors getting the shots “went from a little to a lot” over the years, the number of seniors dying during the winter did not really go down, she said.
Dr. Gary Goldbaum, health officer for the Snohomish Health District, said he hopes that people will not be confused by the report’s findings.
“It would be wrong to conclude: Wow, they’re saying it’s worthless to get vaccinated,” he said.
The findings of previous studies on flu shots may have been skewed by the fact that seniors who get the shot and participate in research studies tend to be health conscious, he said.
The flu vaccine for seniors is like an insurance policy, he said, a precaution people take even if they never have to use it.
“We believe it will protect people,” Goldbaum said of influenza immunizations. “But it may not be the best strategy we’ve got” for protecting seniors.
He and other health officials say strong emphasis should be put on immunizing children starting at age 2.
“Kids get sick a lot,” he said. “Any parent knows this is true.”
So if the number of children becoming sick from the flu is reduced by getting an annual flu shot, the number of parents, and grandparents, who get sick will be reduced, too, he said.
“Every child eligible for the flu vaccine should get it, that’s my message,” Goldbaum said.
“Vaccinating kids will definitely slow the spread of flu through the community and be a powerful protection (against catching the flu) for the elderly,” he said.
Dr. Yuan-Po Tu, a physician who tracks flu for The Everett Clinic, said that as people age their immune system weakens. “The older we get, the less likely we are to get a robust immune response,” he said.
That’s why people who die from the flu tend to be older, he said.
However, like Goldbaum, he said emphasis should be put on getting children immunized to help stop spread of the flu among all age groups.
About half of kids in day-care centers will come down with influenza during a typical winter flu season, he said. And about a third of elementary school children will come down with the virus.
“That’s where the virus is passed around,” he said.
But the biggest number of health complications and deaths and from the flu is among the elderly, he said, killing about 36,000 seniors a year.
So even if seniors get only a partial protection against the flu from the shot, “you have some protection versus no protection,” Tu said.
Reporter Sharon Salyer 425-339-3485 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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