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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | Next >> Those children who were fully vaccinated -- meaning they had a booster shot and then a follow-up shot more than a month later in the same year -- were 49 percent less likely to get sick, the team found.
They also looked at children who were partially vaccinated, meaning they had only the booster shot but no follow-up shot. In this group, the vaccine proved ineffective for children under 2 -- those children were just as likely to get the flu as were children who had received no vaccination, the CDC team reported. But among older children -- those from 2 to just under 5 years of age -- partial vaccination still reduced their risk for the flu by 65 percent, a significant reduction compared to children who had no vaccination at all.
This difference could be because older children might have already had the flu and so had developed some immunity, Shuler said, while the younger children were very vulnerable to the virus.
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"This is an excellent study which confirms previous studies and should be translated to a strong recommendation of the immunization," said Pascal James Imperato, chairman of the department of preventive medicine and community health, State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in New York City.
"It's extremely important that the partial vaccination between 24 and 59 months significantly reduced the influenza infection compared to children in the same age group who had not been vaccinated. This means that even if children are partially immunized, a large number of them will not come down with the infection in a given year," Imperato said. He said that was an important finding, given the resistance among some parents to have children vaccinated and the logistics of going to the doctor's office twice to get shots.
Also, he added, children are on the front lines of spreading the flu because of their relative lack of immunity compared to adults and the fact that children can transmit a virus for as long a week. Adults, on the other hand, are infectious for about three days. "If you want to find out if there's flu epidemic, you first look at children," Imperato said.
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