Study - Flu vaccine significantly reduced winter risk mortality

[sharon sanders]

Vila-C?rcoles A, Rodriguez T, de Diego C, Ochoa O, Valdivieso A, Salsench E, Ansa X, Bad?a W, Sa?n N; EPIVAC Study Group.
Primary Care Service of Tarragona-Valls, Institut Catal? de la Salut, Tarragona, Spain.

This study assessed the relationship between the reception of conventional inactivated influenza vaccine and winter mortality in a prospective cohort that included 11,240 Spanish community-dwelling elderly individuals followed from January 2002 to April 2005. Annual influenza vaccine status was a time-varying condition and primary outcome was all-cause death during study period. Multivariable Cox proportional-hazard models adjusted by age, sex and co-morbidity were used to evaluate vaccine effectiveness. Influenza vaccination was associated with a significant reduction of 23% in winter mortality risk during overall influenza periods. The attributable mortality risk in non-vaccinated people was 24 deaths per 100,000 persons-week within influenza periods, the prevented fraction for the population was 14%, and one death was prevented for every 239 annual vaccinations (ranging from 144 in Winter 2005 to 1748 in Winter 2002).
PMID: 17698263 [PubMed - in process]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...ez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

 

[gsgs]

Re: Study - Flu vaccine significantly reduced winter risk mortality

24 deaths per 100000 per winter-week looks low

1 death per 240 vaccinations : 1 death = ~$5000
but maybe people were already sick and would have died
without influenza within some months anyway.

seems that Spain has more flu than average.

what we need is:
average gain of years of life-expectation per vaccination

has someone an estimate for that ?


wanted : estimates for the
number of lost life-extectation years due to influenza
for several countries

plus estimates how much vaccination would reduce this