Study finds children born in October less likely to get the flu, ET HealthWorld | Top Vip News

Los Angeles: According to a US study, children born in October are more likely to be vaccinated against influenza and less likely to be diagnosed with the disease than children born in other months.

The results of the study were published in The BMJ.

According to the findings, birth month is associated with both the timing of flu vaccination and the likelihood of a flu diagnosis, with October being the best time for young children to receive the flu vaccine, according to the findings. existing recommendations.

The annual flu vaccine is especially critical for young children, who are more likely to get the flu and develop a serious condition requiring hospitalization. Vaccination is recommended in September or October to boost immunity during peak flu season.

Among young children in the United States, preventive care visits tend to occur during the birth months and are a convenient time to receive the influenza vaccine, but large-scale studies on optimal vaccination timing are not available. .

To address this, researchers set out to evaluate the optimal timing of influenza vaccination in young children.

Using health insurance claims data, they identified more than 800,000 children ages 2 to 5 who received the flu vaccine between August 1 and January 31 during 2011-18. They then analyzed the rates of diagnosed influenza among these children by month of birth.

After taking into account a variety of potentially influential factors, such as age, sex, existing conditions, health care use, and family size, the results show that October was the most common month for children were vaccinated.

Children born in October also had the lowest rate of influenza diagnosis. For example, among children born in August, the average rate of influenza diagnosis during the flu seasons studied was 3 percent compared to 2.7 percent for children born in October and 2.9 percent for those born in December.

This is an observational study and the authors acknowledge that their findings are limited to insured children who received medical care. They also cannot rule out the possibility that other unmeasured factors may have influenced their results.

However, the results were similar after additional analyzes to assess whether the relationship between birth month and influenza risk was due to chance, providing greater confidence in their conclusions.

“Our findings suggest that US public health interventions focused on vaccinating young children in October may produce the best protection in typical flu seasons,” they said.

“The study findings are consistent with current recommendations promoting vaccination in October,” they added.