Go to content

Influenza vaccine effectiveness against all-cause mortality following laboratory-confirmed influenza in older adults, 2010-2011 to 2015-2016 seasons in Ontario, Canada

Share

Background — Older adults are at increased risk of mortality from influenza infections. We estimated influenza vaccine effectiveness (VE) against mortality following laboratory-confirmed influenza.

Methods — Using a test-negative design study and linked laboratory and health administrative databases in Ontario, Canada, we estimated VE against all-cause mortality following laboratory-confirmed influenza for community-dwelling adults aged >65 years during the 2010-2011 to 2015-2016 influenza seasons.

Results — Among 54,116 older adults tested for influenza across the 6 seasons, 6,837 died within 30 days of specimen collection. Thirteen percent (925 individuals) tested positive for influenza, and 50.6% were considered vaccinated for that season. Only 23.2% of influenza test-positive cases had influenza recorded as their underlying cause of death. Before and after multivariable adjustment, we estimated VE against all-cause mortality following laboratory-confirmed influenza to be 20% (95%CI, 8%-30%) and 20% (95%CI, 7%-30%), respectively. This estimate increased to 34% after correcting for influenza vaccination exposure misclassification. We observed significant VE against deaths following influenza confirmation during 2014-2015 (VE=26% [95%CI, 5%-42%]). We also observed significant VE against deaths following confirmation of influenza A/H1N1 and A/H3N2, and against deaths with COPD as the underlying cause.

Conclusions — These results support the importance of influenza vaccination in older adults, who account for most influenza-associated deaths annually.

Information

Citation

Chung H, Buchan SA, Campigotto A, Campitelli MA, Crowcroft NS, Dubey V, Gubbay JB, Karnauchow T, Katz K, McGeer AJ, McNally D, Mubareka S, Murti M, Richardson DC, Rosella LC, Schwartz KL, Smieja M, Zahariadis G, Kwong JC. Clin Infect Dis. 2021; 73(5):e1191-e1199. Epub 2020 Dec 23.

View Source

Associated Sites