 | | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
(Ivanhoe Newswire) The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend the flu shot for all children over the age of six months. The National Asthma Education and Prevention Program says children with asthma should get it as well.
New research is raising questions about those recommendations. Specifically, investigators from the Mayo Clinic find children who receive the flu shot -- including those with asthma -- are actually more likely to land in the hospital when they develop an acute case of the flu.
Text Continues Below
The concerns that vaccination maybe associated with asthma exacerbations have been disproved with multiple studies in the past, but the vaccines effectiveness has not been well-established, study author Avni Joshi, M.D., was quoted as saying. His study looked at 263 children between the ages of 6 months and 18 years, all of whom had a laboratory-documented case of the flu.
Children who had received the flu shot were three times more likely to be hospitalized, and among the kids with asthma, those who got the shot had a significantly higher risk of hospitalization as well. Other factors, such as severity of asthma, did not affect that risk.
Despite these results, however, the investigators stop short of saying the flu shot actually contributes to flu-related hospitalizations. While these findings do raise questions about the efficacy of the vaccine, they do not in fact implicate it as a cause of hospitalizations, notes Dr. Joshi. More studies are needed to assess not only the immunogenicity, but also the efficacy of different influenza vaccines in asthmatic subjects.
SOURCE: Presented at the International Conference of the American Thoracic Society, May 19, 2009
If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Melissa Medalie at mmedalie@ivanhoe.com
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
|
.gif)
