Food Consumer
09/11/2010
Editor’s note: For your information, food consumer is the first to report the study.
Italian researchers have discovered that the influenza vaccine does NOT reduce risk of severe complications from influenza viral infections that result in hospital death, influenza or pneumonia admission among the elderly population.
The finding came after Manzoli L. and colleagues from the University G. d’Annunzio of Chieti in Italy examined data from 32,457 elderly people, of whom 66.2 percent received the influenza vaccine.
According to a recent review, almost all flu vaccine trials, with the exception of one out of 49 of said trials, have not compared the incidence of flu in the vaccinated population with that in those unvaccinated.
Rather, subjects who received flu shots in influenza vaccine trials were only tested for antigens which were produced in response to flu vaccine. When a flu vaccine generated certain levels of antigens as defined by researchers, the vaccine maker claimed that the flu vaccine worked to prevent flu.