Understanding the low effectiveness of influenza vaccines in older adults of South Korea: an exploration of contributing factors
Vaccine·
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.vaccine.2025.128076
- PMID
- 41380253
- PMCID
- —
- OpenAlex
- W4417214247
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The article highlights a coverage–effectiveness paradox in older adults and outlines candidate policy and platform-level strategies to improve influenza vaccine outcomes in South Korea, with potential global relevance.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
Why does South Korea observe lower influenza vaccine effectiveness in older adults than comparator regions, and what strategies could address this gap?
Study design
Narrative viewpoint/essay reviewing potential contributing factors and proposed solutions; no primary data collection or quantitative synthesis described.
Population and setting
Focus on older adults in South Korea, with comparative references to the United States, Canada, and Europe.
Main findings
The authors attribute South Korea's lower observed VE to four factors: historical antigenic dissimilarity between circulating and vaccine strains, immune imprinting from annual vaccination, egg-adaptation effects on vaccine immune responses, and limited natural exposure under mature vaccination programs. They recommend enhanced regional surveillance input into strain selection, non-egg-based platforms such as mRNA and cell-culture vaccines, and highly immunogenic or immuno-focusing vaccine designs.
Public-health relevance
The article highlights a coverage–effectiveness paradox in older adults and outlines candidate policy and platform-level strategies to improve influenza vaccine outcomes in South Korea, with potential global relevance.
Important limitations
No study-design or evidence limitations are explicitly stated in the abstract. This summary is limited to the supplied single-article abstract and metadata and requires the full paper for decision-grade interpretation.
GIDS interpretation
As a viewpoint on factors affecting vaccine effectiveness and surveillance-informed strain selection, the article is relevant to monitoring and analytic categories concerning influenza vaccination and surveillance integration; the supplied metadata does not connect this paper to any live surveillance signal.
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 10 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.