PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Study backs flu vaccinations for elderly

2015-08-24
(Press-News.org) PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study of the records of millions of nursing home residents affirms the value of influenza vaccination among the elderly. The Brown University analysis found that between 2000 and 2009, the better matched the vaccine was for the influenza strain going around, the fewer nursing home residents died or were hospitalized.

Although flu vaccination is a standard of care and a measure of quality in nursing homes, some public health experts question the evidence of whether they do any good, said Vincent Mor, corresponding author of the study and the Florence Pirce Grant Professor in the Brown University School of Public Health. Clinical trials that would withhold vaccination for a control group are not ethical, and observational studies that track differences among those who are vaccinated and those who are not have been suspected of bias (i.e., people left unvaccinated may be too frail compared to the vaccinated general population).

In the new research, published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Brown public health and infectious disease experts took a different approach to assess whether vaccination helps.

Year-to-year the ability of the vaccine to fight the flu can vary widely. Sometimes vaccine makers produce a great match that is highly protective. In other years the prevailing flu strain does not match the vaccine well.

The researchers took advantage of this natural variation over the decade 2000-09 to see whether nursing home residents were better off when the match was good compared to when the match was bad. If vaccines don't help the elderly, as some critics suggest, then nursing home residents shouldn't fare any better when the vaccine is a good match than when it's a bad match.

"What we've used is the randomness of the match," Mor said. "Ours is the first study to, we think, come up with an unbiased approach."

The results show that vaccinations help keep some nursing home residents alive and out of the hospital.

The match rate varied particularly widely in the flu strain A/H3N2, which is typically the strain that leads to most flu hospitalizations and deaths. Over the 10-year study period, the match rate ranged from 11.2 percent in 2003-2004 and 22 percent the next year, to 100 percent in the first two study years and in the last one. Match rates for strain A/H1N1 were usually very high and for strain B were usually low.

By comparing weekly deaths and flu-related hospitalizations in each year's flu season, the researchers were able to calculate that for every percentage point increase in the A/H3N2 match rate, weekly deaths declined by about 0.0016 and hospitalizations declined by about 0.002 per 1,000 nursing home residents.

Those numbers may seem small, but put another way, among about 1 million elderly persons living in nursing homes each year, a 50-percentage point increase in the match rate for a flu season would save the lives of 2,560 people and prevent 3,200 hospitalizations.

"That's saving lives," Mor said. "That's really a profound effect."

Mor said the results are likely applicable to all elderly people, the vast majority of whom do not live in nursing homes. Vaccination rates among the elderly in the community, however, tend to be much lower than in nursing homes.

Co-author Dr. Stefan Gravenstein, adjunct professor of medicine and health services, policy and practice, agreed.

"This study evidences protection for an elderly population for whom vaccine efficacy has been questioned," he said. "Annual vaccination is the only way to maximize the benefit of vaccine, no matter what the age."

INFORMATION:

The study's lead author is Dr. Aurora Pop-Vicas, clinical assistant professor of medicine in the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island. Other authors are Momotazur Rahman, and Pedro Gozalo.

The Agency for Health Care Research and Quality funded the study (R01HS018462).



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

GPM sees rainfall in Tropical Depression Kilo nearing Johnston Island

GPM sees rainfall in Tropical Depression Kilo nearing Johnston Island
2015-08-24
The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite gathered rainfall data on Tropical Depression Kilo as it heads toward Johnston Island in the Central Pacific Ocean. On August 24, a Tropical Storm Warning was posted for Johnston Island Kilo formed as depression and strengthened into a tropical storm to southeast of the Hawaiian Islands on August 20, 2015. By 5 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 23, Kilo weakened to a tropical depression. Today, August 24, the tropical depression nearing Johnston Island. The National Hurricane Center noted that Johnston Island ...

Brains of abused teenagers show 'encouraging' ability to regulate emotions

2015-08-24
Washington D.C., August 24, 2015 - Children who have been abused typically experience more intense emotions than their peers who have not been abused. This is often considered a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) set to find out what happens when these children are taught how to regulate their emotions. Could that better help them cope with difficult situations? The team of researchers from the University of Washington studied what happens ...

How to stay awake without caffeine

2015-08-24
WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 2015 -- You're tired and you need an energy boost, but you don't want the jitters from caffeine. What to do? In this Reactions video, we give you some chemistry-backed tips -- one of which involves cats -- to boost your productivity and stay awake without refilling the coffee cup. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/SvEQBURrPow INFORMATION: Subscribe to our weekly series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions. The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 ...

Ants do drugs

2015-08-24
We humans have been using self-medication to cure the illnesses since the dawn of our species. There is some evidence that also other animals can exhibit this type of behavior, but the evidence has been hard to come by. Scientists from the University of Helsinki, Finland, have now shown that black ant Formica fusca can change their taste for food once exposed to the fungal pathogens. In the compound of interest was hydrogen peroxide, which can be found in the damaged plants, other insects and cadavers. "When ants are feeding on the diet containing extra free radicals ...

Enjoyment motivates people to participate in the sharing economy

2015-08-24
People are motivated to participate in the sharing economy because of its ecological sustainability, the enjoyment derived from the activity, the sense of community, and saving money and time. Ecological sustainability is one of the basic principles of the sharing economy - not to purchase everything individually but rather consumer collaboratively by sharing goods and services. Another canonical principle of the sharing economy is 'paying it forward'. However, collaborative consumption may involve the same hurdles as any other type of green consumption, researcher from ...

Patient born with insensitivity to pain acquires neuropathic pain following childbirth

2015-08-24
The report, published on F1000Research and titled Neuropathic pain in a patient with congenital insensitivity to pain has just passed peer review. It concerns a unique case of a woman with Channelopathy-associated Insensitivity to Pain (CIP) Syndrome, who developed features of neuropathic pain after sustaining pelvic fractures and an epidural hematoma that impinged on the right fifth lumbar (L5) nerve root. These injuries were sustained during a painless labour, which culminated in a Caesarean section. The patient had been diagnosed with CIP as child. This was later ...

Children's hospitals shift from CT scans for common childhood health problems

2015-08-24
CINCINNATI - A study published online Aug. 24 by the journal Pediatrics finds a significant decrease in the use of computed tomography (CT) scans at children's hospitals for 10 common childhood diagnoses including seizure, concussion, appendectomy and upper respiratory tract infection. Alternate types of imaging such as ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are being used more frequently for eight of the 10 diagnoses. Study authors hypothesize the decline in CT usage may be attributable to a growing body of evidence linking ionizing radiation from CT scans to ...

Crying has its perks

2015-08-24
Yes, a good cry indeed might go a long way to make you feel better, says Asmir Gračanin of the University of Tilburg in the Netherlands, lead author of a study in Springer's journal Motivation and Emotion. These findings were established after a research team videotaped a group of participants while watching the emotionally charged films La vita è bella and Hachi: A Dog's Tale. Afterwards, the participants were asked a few times to reflect on how they felt. Although humans are the only species able to shed emotional tears, little is known about the function ...

Self-healing landscape: Landslides after earthquakes

2015-08-24
21.08.2015: In mountainous regions earthquakes often cause strong landslides, which can be exacerbated by heavy rain. However, after an initial increase, the frequency of these mass wasting events, often enormous and dangerous, declines, in fact independently of meteorological events and aftershocks. These new findings are presented by a German-Franco-Japanese team of geoscientists in the current issue of the journal Geology, under the lead of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. Even after strong earthquake the activity of landslides returns back over the course ...

Smooth robot movements reduce energy consumption by up to 40 percent

Smooth robot movements reduce energy consumption by up to 40 percent
2015-08-24
By minimizing the acceleration of industrial robots, energy consumption can be reduced by up to 40 percent - while retaining the given production time. This is the result of a new optimization algorithm that was developed by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology. Optimization of the robot's movements reduces acceleration and deceleration, as well as the time the robot is at a standstill since being at a standstill also consumes energy. "We simply let the robot move slower instead of waiting for other robots and machines to catch up before carrying out the ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Breast cancer risk in younger women may be influenced by hormone therapy

Strategies for staying smoke-free after rehab

Commentary questions the potential benefit of levothyroxine treatment of mild hypothyroidism during pregnancy

Study projects over 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if USAID defunding continues

New study reveals 33% gap in transplant access for UK’s poorest children

Dysregulated epigenetic memory in early embryos offers new clues to the inheritance of polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)

IVF and IUI pregnancy rates remain stable across Europe, despite an increasing uptake of single embryo transfer

It takes a village: Chimpanzee babies do better when their moms have social connections

From lab to market: how renewable polymers could transform medicine

Striking increase in obesity observed among youth between 2011 and 2023

No evidence that medications trigger microscopic colitis in older adults

NYUAD researchers find link between brain growth and mental health disorders

Aging-related inflammation is not universal across human populations, new study finds

University of Oregon to create national children’s mental health center with $11 million federal grant

Rare achievement: UTA undergrad publishes research

Fact or fiction? The ADHD info dilemma

Genetic ancestry linked to risk of severe dengue

Genomes reveal the Norwegian lemming as one of the youngest mammal species

Early birds get the burn: Monash study finds early bedtimes associated with more physical activity

Groundbreaking analysis provides day-by-day insight into prehistoric plankton’s capacity for change

Southern Ocean saltier, hotter and losing ice fast as decades-long trend unexpectedly reverses

Human fishing reshaped Caribbean reef food webs, 7000-year old exposed fossilized reefs reveal

Killer whales, kind gestures: Orcas offer food to humans in the wild

Hurricane ecology research reveals critical vulnerabilities of coastal ecosystems

Montana State geologist’s Antarctic research focuses on accumulations of rare earth elements

Groundbreaking cancer therapy clinical trial with US Department of Energy’s accelerator-produced actinium-225 set to begin this summer

Tens of thousands of heart attacks and strokes could be avoided each year if cholesterol-lowering drugs were used according to guidelines

Leading cancer and metabolic disease expert Michael Karin joins Sanford Burnham Prebys

Low-intensity brain stimulation may restore neuron health in Alzheimer's disease

Four-day school week may not be best for students, review finds

[Press-News.org] Study backs flu vaccinations for elderly