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It appears that old people aren’t actually protected from
potentially deadly diseases such as pneumonia by flu shots. The vaccine was
over appreciated however it does protect against certain strains of influenza.
This new study included more than 700 elderly people, half
of whom had received a flu shot and half of whom had not. The differences
between the results showed that flu vaccines don’t necessarily keep death away.
"Previous studies were likely measuring a benefit not
directly attributable to the vaccine itself, but something specific to the
individuals who were vaccinated - healthy-user benefit or frailty bias," Dean T. Eurich of the School of Public Health
at the University
of Alberta said.
Therefore a healthy way of living makes your life longer, not any kind of flu
vaccine. This is an attribute that is almost impossible to capture in large
scale studies because it is so dependable on millions of other factors.
The results will appear in the first issue for September of
the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, a
publication of the American Thoracic Society.
Dr. Eurich and colleagues hypothesized that if the
healthy-user effect was responsible for the mortality benefit associated with
influenza vaccination seen in observational studies, there should also be a
significant mortality benefit present during the "off-season".
"Over the last two decades in the United Sates, even
while [flu] vaccination rates among the elderly have increased from 15 to 65
percent, there has been no commensurate decrease in hospital admissions or
all-cause mortality," added Eurich.
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