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Moderate effectiveness of US influenza vaccines

on Thu, 10/11/2012 - 22:45

A group of researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center found that the effectiveness of US influenza vaccines during the 2010-2011 season was moderate, even if all 3 vaccine strains were well matched to circulating strains.

The authors of the work, published on Clinical Infectious Diseases, performed a case-control study on around 5000 patients with flu-like illness during the 2010–2011 flu season. The estimated efficacy of either inactivated or live-attenuated vaccine ranged from 69% in children aged 6 months-8 years to 38% in adults older than 65 years.

These results contrast those studies of poorly matched vaccines (estimated efficacy lower than 30%) but are nevertheless modest. Most of all, data regarding efficacy in older adults are concerning, although the low number of patients in this age group might have influenced this finding.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22843783?dopt=Abstract

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