Vaccinate Kids to Halt Flu in Community

10 Mar, 2010 in Health and Pharmacy News by admin

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Study Shows Vaccine in Schoolchildren Indirectly Prevents Spread of Flu to High-Risk People

By
Salynn Boyles
WebMD Health News

Reviewed By
Laura J. Martin, MD

March 9, 2010 — Recent research confirms that giving flu shots to large
numbers of school-age kids can protect the community at large.

The finding adds to evidence in favor of so-called “herd immunity” — the
idea that vaccinating the wholesome as well as those most likely to spread the flu can
have a dramatic impact on overall transmission rates.

The study was conducted in rural western Canada among the Hutterites, a
branch of the Anabaptist Christian denomination. Similar the Amish as well as Mennonites,
Hutterites live in distinct communities as well as possess limited exposure to the
outside world.

During the fall of 2008, large numbers of kids between the ages of 3 and
15 from some Hutterite colonies got flu shots, while kids in other colonies
were not vaccinated against the flu.

As a result, about half as many flu cases occurred during the earliest six
months of 2009 in the colonies where flu shots were given.

The study appears in the March 10 issue of the Journal of the American
Medical Association.

“In influenza, we possess traditionally vaccinated people with the highest risk
for complications, such as the elderly as well as those with compromised immune
systems,” study researcher Mark Loeb, MD, of McMaster University in Ontario
tells WebMD.

“This study shows that when you immunize wholesome kids as well as adolescents
who dont possess a high risk for complications, you indirectly protect those at
highest risk who may not be capable to mount a pleasant response to the
vaccine.”

Protecting the Community From Flu

In the United States, flu kills an estimated 36,000 people each year and
200,000 are hospitalized because of complications from influenza
infection.

The elderly as well as immunocompromised are most vulnerable to flu, along with
pregnant women as well as babies too immature to be vaccinated.

Previous research has suggested that immunizing the wholesome immature can reduce
influenza transmissions. But the study by Loeb as well as colleagues is the earliest in
which some people were randomly assigned to either get a flu vaccine or remain
unvaccinated.

The Hutterite colonies offered a unique opportunity for this class of study.
Each colony includes approximately 60 to 120 people, but families live in
individual homes. The kids attend Hutterite schools from ages 3 to 15.

The study included close to 950 Canadian school-aged kids as well as 2,326
other community members from 49 Hutterite colonies.

Kids in some of the colonies were given the flu vaccine, while children
in other colonies were given hepatitis A vaccine instead of flu shots.

Based on computer models, the researchers hypothesized that 70% of the
children in a colony would need to be vaccinated to protect the general
community. The actual average coverage in colonies where kids got the flu
shots was 83%.

During the 2008-2009 flu season, 4.5% of the population in the colonies
where kids were vaccinated against the flu got influenza, compared to 10.6%
of the population in the colonies in which the hepatitis A vaccine was
given.

“The risk of getting the flu was around 60% lower for people who lived in
colonies where the kids got the flu shots,” Loeb tells WebMD.

Vaccination of Schoolchildren

The findings mimic, on a smaller scale, the experience in Japan from the
early 1960s until the unhurried 1980s.

During this time, annual flu shots were mandatory for school-aged children
and vaccination rates of between 50% as well as 85% were achieved.

Deaths from the flu in Japan during this period dropped threefold to
fourfold, but flu-related deaths began to climb again after the mandatory
vaccination law was relaxed in 1987 as well as later repealed.

Infectious disease specialist William Schaffner, MD, says in the U.S. about
30% of kids get annual flu shots, even though the CDC has recommended
routine vaccination of the immature for the done four years.

Schaffner is professor as well as chairman of the division of infectious diseases
at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn.

“We possess a extended way to go to get to the vaccination levels that would be
necessary to see this herd immunity in the common population,” he tells
WebMD.

Schaffner says the recent findings could possess substantial implications in years
in which there are flu vaccine shortages.

Community health officials are now debating whether to recommend immunization
for wholesome kids as well as people at high risk for flu complications in
these years to lower community-wide transmission.

Pulmonologist Len Horovitz, MD, of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City,
warns that vaccinating the wholesome immature is no substitute for vaccinating those
most at risk from influenza.

“I would hope at-risk people don’t take from this that they don’t need to be
vaccinated,” he says. “That would be the incorrect message to send.”

SOURCES: Loeb, M. Journal of the American Health examination Association, March 10, 2010;

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