Do Flu Shots Work?
A new study indicates there’s some doubt:
Kids who got immunized did not get the flu at lower rates than unvaccinated kids. In fact, the immunized youngsters were just as likely to be hospitalized or to visit the doctor as kids who never received the vaccine.
Of course the trial itself may be less than perfect, so the jury’s still out.
Visit Link • 09 Jan 2009 • 5 Comments • Tags: medicine, news
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5 Comments.
Thanks for the link, interesting...
One flaw they don't mention in the paper is that this is not a randomized trial. They start with 414 that already have the flu and then ask wether they were immunized. This can introduce all kind of bias. For instance, there might be kids particularly sensitive to flu (e.g. genetics reasons), and that already had the flu once. These kids are more likely to be immunized. But since they are more sensitive to the flu, you end up enriching the immunized population with high-sensitivity kids. I have no idea if this is true, it is just an example of how bias are introduced this way.
The randomized trial would start with a bunch of kids, and randomly decide to immunize them or not, and then follow up on their case. This is of course harder to do.
charles • 09 January 2009 • 03:01 PM
I give my kids Vitamin D3 instead of flu shots. At least 2,400 IU a day. I take five times that much. In the Summer, we just let the sun shine on our skin of course. I'm not anti-vaccination in general, however, the flu shots, even if they did work, always seemed like a bad gamble.
Where I live, flu shots are mandatory for children aged 5 or under who are enrolled in pre-schools. I don't like when public policy is founded on bad science.
@charles - good point about the selection bias in this study.
John P. Speno • 09 Jan 2009 • 04:01 PM
If it's anything like the flu shot I got this year, they would have only been immunised against the 2 strains of flu the doctors think are most likely to be doing the rounds this year (Melbourne and Florida flu's in my case). If there are other strains which appear then there's no additional protection.
So far I reckon my flu jab has stopped me from catching the flu off of colleagues at least twice since I got immunised. Normally I'd be one of the first to catch it, whereas this year I've barely had a sniffle.
Chris • 09 Jan 2009 • 07:01 PM
Chris is right, you only get vaccinated against the most likely strains of flu virus. Last year that guess was wrong. Luckily where I work, they not only provided my flu shot, but provided the anti-viral medication when we found out it would be ineffective (tamiflu I think), which comes at $300 a pop normally :)
Cody • 14 Jan 2009 • 03:01 PM
BTW, my youngest did get a flu shot after all. He'll be old enough so it won't be mandatory next year. Feh.
John P. Speno • 23 Jan 2009 • 01:01 PM
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