Health and Disability

In the largest nursing home study to date on the effect of high dose flu vaccine, researchers found that shots with four times the strength of standard flu shots significantly reduced the risk of being hospitalized during theinfluenza season. There was a 1.2 percent difference (19.7 percent versus 20.9 percent) in admission for the group that received the high dose vaccine compared to the one that received the standard dose vaccine. The findings were presented as a late breaking research presentation on Oct. 10 at the Infectious Diseases Society of America meeting in San Diego.

"If given to all approximately 1.5 million nursing home residents, a one percent drop in hospitalizations would translate to thousands fewer being hospitalized," said Stefan Gravenstein, MD, MPH, lead author of the study, Director of the Center for Geriatrics and Palliative Care at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, and on faculty at both the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and adjunct at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the risk of hospitalization is one in five during the flu season, the same as in this study.

The study involved more than 50,000 participants 65 years old and older (nearly 14,000 were over the age of 90) from 823 nursing homes in 38 states. The residents were given influenza shots to help protect them from influenza during the period of November 2013 to March 2014.