Kids who get flu shots may be at greater risk of hospitalization

The American Thoracic Society recently hosted a dance. But nobody had any fun.

ATS officials didn’t actually intend for there to be dancing at their annual meeting last month in San Diego. But when Dr. Avni Y. Joshi of the Mayo Clinic presented a study indicating that children who get a flu shot have a significantly greater risk of hospitalization (asthmatic children were at highest risk), a crowd of medical mainstreamers immediately jumped up and started dancing all around it.

We’ll let Dr. Joshi have the first dance: She told HealthDay News that there’s no reason to believe the vaccine actually caused the hospitalizations.

Really? No reason? None at all?

Dr. Joshi added: “This may not be a reflection of the vaccine but that these patients are the sickest, and their doctors insist they get a vaccination.”

Ah! So…it’s not the vaccine, it’s the fault of the insistent doctors? But I’m sure those nagging doctors would point out that the Centers for Disease Control recommends that ALL children, ages 6 months to 18 years, get the yearly shot – a recommendation followed by the National Asthma Education and Prevention Program.

Next dance – Dr. Gurjit Khurana Hershey, an asthma researcher and professor of pediatrics, told HealthDay that kids with asthma “may be the more severely ill children, so it may have very little to do with the vaccine.”

Right, so I guess these kids would have ended up in the hospital anyway? It’s just a coincidence that hospitalization rates were higher in vaccinated kids?

Dr. Hank Bernstein, a Dartmouth pediatric professor took a turn on the dance floor, telling HealthDay that the study has too many unknowns and covered too many flu seasons and too wide an age range. Then he offered this unexpected two- step: “We know that the efficacy of the vaccine can be limited in younger children.”

What! We “know” that? Maybe pediatric professors know that, but I’ll bet the CDC would rather they not go around actually saying it out loud to reporters.

Finally, Dr. Joshi waltzed in again, offering this quote to Medscape: “Inherently, it’s a safe vaccine so we tend to give it to everyone, but we don’t think about how effective it is – especially in asthmatic children.”

Really? You actually said that? You don’t think about how effective it is, ESPECIALLY in asthmatic children?

Dr. Joshi and her colleagues should check her study results again. Because those results seem to indicate that it’s high time to start thinking about these things. Especially in asthmatic children.

Sources:
“Hospitalization Rates Higher in Kids Who Get Flu Shots” Amanda Gardner, HealthDay News, 5/19/09, healthday.com
“ATS 2009: Flu Vaccination May Triple Risk for Flu-Related Hospitalization in Children With Asthma” Kristina Rebelo, Medscape Medical News, 5/25/09, medscape.com