Influenza infection leads to increased morbidity and mortality among people with cardiovascular diseases (CVD).
A group of American scientists from leading medical universities in the United States conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the flu vaccine’s role in CVD survival. The researchers aimed to evaluate the flu vaccine’s effect on mortality and cardiovascular complications in CVD patients.
Results
Vaccination against influenza is associated with a lower risk of mortality:
- from all causes (risk ratio-0.72);
- cardiovascular mortality (risk ratio-0.82);
- mortality from serious cardiovascular events (risk ratio-0.87). The
- association between influenza vaccination and reduced risk of myocardial infarction was not statistically significant.
Data processing
For the meta-analysis, the researchers selected publications that evaluated the flu vaccine’s impact on mortality and cardiovascular outcomes in CVD patients. The list of analyzed articles included randomized placebo-controlled and observational studies. The search for publications was carried out in the electronic libraries PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane.
For their work, the scientists selected 16 studies, in which 237,058 people took part. The studies included 4 randomized-placebo-controlled studies (1667 participants) and 12 observational studies (235,391 participants). The average duration of follow — up was 19.5 months.
Participants:
- the average age was 69.2 ± 7.01 years;
- women — 36.6%;
- suffered from hypertension — 65.1%;
- suffered from diabetes — 31.1%;
- smoked — 23.4%.
Conclusions
The meta-analysis clearly showed that data from randomized and observational studies support the hypothesis of a decrease in mortality in adults with CVD when using the influenza vaccine.
Scientists should continue efforts to influenza vaccination in this group of the population.
