With flu season fast approaching, U.S. health officials predicted Wednesday that this year’s vaccine will be a better match for the circulating influenza strains than last year’s vaccine proved to be.
Not only do officials believe this year’s vaccine will be more effective, they’re saying that supplies will be plentiful, too. So, the U.S. Centers for […]

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Canadian researchers are challenging the widely held belief that flu shots help protect older people from potentially deadly diseases such as pneumonia.
While the researchers say the vaccine does protect against certain strains of influenza, its overall benefit seems to have been exaggerated by so-called observational studies that found a big reduction in “all-cause mortality” among […]

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today announced that it has approved this year’s seasonal influenza vaccines that include new strains of the virus likely to cause flu in the United States during the 2008-2009 season.
The six vaccines and their manufacturers are: CSL Limited, Afluria; GlaxoSmithKline Biologicals, Fluarix; ID Biomedical Corporation of Quebec, FluLaval; […]

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Older, frail adults are more susceptible to getting the flu, even if they have been vaccinated, and once getting the flu, they are more susceptible to such complications as pneumonia. It had been thought that flu vaccine would prevent flu — and pneumonia — across all groups of seniors, but this benefit appears to be […]

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A new study at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine investigating nearly 2,220 pneumonia patients finds that men who come to the hospital generally are sicker than women. Despite aggressive medical care those men have a 30 percent higher risk of dying over the next year.
Since the social factors researchers examined were not sufficient to […]

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