Cochrane re-arranged: Support for policies to vaccinate elderly people against influenza
Vaccine·
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.vaccine.2013.09.063
- PMID
- 24095882
- PMCID
- —
- OpenAlex
- —
- Study type
- Meta-analysis
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The authors interpret the re-arranged evidence as supporting policies to vaccinate elderly people against influenza and as providing substantial evidence that vaccination can reduce infection and related disease and death in this group.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The study re-analyses the same data underlying the 2010 Cochrane review by Jefferson et al. to test whether re-arranging the evidence within a biological/conceptual framework yields a clearer signal of influenza vaccine effects in older adults.
Study design
Re-analysis of previously published meta-analytic data from the 2010 Cochrane review by Jefferson et al., using a biological/conceptual framework tied to the patient journey and simple frequency distributions of vaccine effectiveness values.
Population and setting
Elderly populations, drawing on dozens of clinical studies spanning roughly four decades that were included in the 2010 Cochrane review.
Main findings
Using broad outcome definitions and frequency distributions, the re-arranged data yielded average vaccine effectiveness estimates of roughly 60% against infection, ~50% against confirmed infection, ~40% against influenza-like illness, and ~30% against influenza-related complications, with wide dispersion. Average effectiveness was near zero in the absence of virus circulation and tended to decline as virus circulation decreased and antigenic drift increased.
Public-health relevance
The authors interpret the re-arranged evidence as supporting policies to vaccinate elderly people against influenza and as providing substantial evidence that vaccination can reduce infection and related disease and death in this group.
Important limitations
No study limitations are explicitly stated in the supplied abstract. The summary is limited to the supplied single-article abstract/metadata and requires the original paper for decision-grade interpretation, including assessment of the re-analysis methods, data handling, and comparability with the original Cochrane review's conclusions.
GIDS interpretation
Within GIDS, this article is discoverable as a peer-reviewed meta-analysis indexed under influenza, vaccination, vaccine effectiveness, vaccine safety, and health policy. It does not, by itself, constitute a live surveillance signal; any operational link to current monitoring would require separate evidence.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 11 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.