Giving older people in nursing homes a quadruple-strength flu jab could reduce hospital admissions, a study has found.
Researchers found that the stronger vaccine cut rates of hospitalisation with respiratory illness by 12.7 per cent. They also found that hospitalisation for any reason was lower, although the higher-dose vaccine did not reduce death rates.
The study, which involved 38,000 US care home residents, is published in the Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal.
Stefan Gravenstein, of Brown University in Rhode Island, said: “Respiratory illness as the primary reason for hospitalisation accounted for only about a third of the reduction in hospitalisation that we measured.”
Older people tend to respond less well to the flu vaccine. Previous studies suggested that the stronger dose might overcome this problem but had focused on relatively healthy individuals. Professor Gravenstein said: “It still needed to be established that it would help even the frailest folks. In our study, a quarter of the sample was over 90.
Advertisement
“We asked if the high-dose vaccine also would work better than a regular dose in the population we consider least able to respond. This paper says it can.”
Overall, for every 69 people given the larger dose, one more person stayed out of hospital during the flu season.