A recent study from the University of Calgary, Canada, indicates that the annual flu vaccine reduces the risk of cerebrovascular accidents (CVA).
A team of researchers analyzed the health records of more than 4 million Canadians over a nine-year period. The results suggest that flu vaccination should be strongly recommended for everyonesimilarly to what is already recommended for individuals with heart disease.
“The flu vaccine is known to reduce the risk of heart attack and hospitalization in people with heart disease. We wanted to know if the vaccine has the same protective qualities for people at risk of” stroke, said Michael Hill, principal investigator of the study, recently published in Lancet Public Health.
“Our results show that the risk of stroke is lower among people who have recently received a flu shot. This was true for all adults, not just those at high risk of having a stroke,” she noted.
Data for the study were obtained from the Alberta Health Insurance Plan. The researchers took into account several factors such as age, use of anticoagulants, and risk factors, including chronic conditions.
“We found that the risk of stroke was significantly reduced in the six months following a flu vaccination,” said Jessalyn Holodinsky, also an author of the study. “The results suggest that widespread flu vaccination may be a viable public health strategy to prevent stroke”, he stressed.
The researchers say two strengths of this study are that they used data from an entire population over a period of 10 flu seasons and that it took place in a province with a single health system.
Michael Hill indicated that the widespread benefit of flu vaccination for preventing stroke is a new finding, which he hopes will lead to further investigation into the indirect protective factors of the flu vaccine.
“We know that the upper respiratory infections often precede heart attacks and strokes. Preventing or reducing the severity of the flu provides a protective factor, particularly for strokes,” he said.
“The protective association was very strong. We saw that it benefited both men and women and that there was a clear reduction in the risk of stroke with increasing age”, he added.
ZAP // 
