Elderly people: propensity to be vaccinated for seasonal influenza in Italy

[tetano]

Hum Vaccin Immunother. 2020 Feb 10:1-10. doi: 10.1080/21645515.2019.1706931. [Epub ahead of print] Elderly people: propensity to be vaccinated for seasonal influenza in Italy.

Marano G¹, Pariani E², Luconi E³, Pellegrinelli L², Galli C², Magoni M⁴, Piro A⁴, Scarcella C⁴, Biganzoli EM^5,6, Boracchi P⁵, Castaldi S^2,3.
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Abstract

Seasonal influenza continues to be a major cause of illness and death. Vaccination is the most cost-effective prophylaxis to prevent the disease and it is particularly important for people who are at high risk of serious complications derived from influenza, especially for people ≥65 years. In Italy, the influenza vaccination program has been unsuccessful with low rates of uptake in people ≥65 years. We analyzed all the community ≥65 years of the Health Promoting Agency (HPA) of Brescia (northern Italy) to evaluate the propensity attitudes toward influenza vaccination among people ≥65 years in four consecutive seasonal influenza campaigns (from 2014/2015 to 2017/2018). Information about subjects were retrieved from administrative databases. Data from 952,822 records were analyzed. The prevalence of vaccinated subjects in the four campaigns was 38.6%, 33.7%, 37.7%, and 40.1%, respectively. Among vaccinated people, the frequencies of individuals aged 65-69.9 years were lower than the frequencies of those in the other age classes, with highest frequencies of vaccinated people in the 75-79.9 years age-class. Overall, males showed a slightly higher propensity to be vaccinated and the propensity toward vaccination increased with age in both genders. Suffering from a chronic disease increased the propensity to vaccination; hypertension had the highest impact on the propensity whereas suffering from vasculopathy has the opposite effect.The value of this study is the possibility to know the factors that might indicate a propensity to get an influenza vaccination and to consider a different approach to people ≥65 years with the characteristics indicating a lower propensity to vaccination.


KEYWORDS:

Influenza vaccination; comorbidities; elderly; propensity score

PMID: 32040352 DOI: 10.1080/21645515.2019.1706931