Could flu vaccine help ward off severe COVID-19? – new study

“To examine the potential benefits of the SARS-CoV-2 influenza vaccine: a retrospective cohort analysis of 74,754 patients,” was published last week by researchers at the University of Miami in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS One. According to their findings, based on electronic health records from international databases – including Israel – getting an annual flu shot could reduce the likelihood of having stroke, sepsis and deep vein thrombosis. (blood clots) as a result of COVID-19, as well as decreases the chances of being admitted to the emergency room or intensive care.

Doctors and scientists identified approximately 75,000 health records through the TriNetX research database to be used in the study: 37,377 patients who had received the influenza vaccine – intranasal or intramuscular – between two weeks and six months before being diagnosed with the virus, and 37,377 who had not taken the flu shot before getting the corona. Patients were matched on age, gender, race, ethnicity, and whether they had any pre-existing medical conditions that could affect their results, such as diabetes, obesity, or heart disease. .

Next, they compared the incidence of 15 adverse results within 30, 60, and 120 days of testing positive for the coronavirus.

Specifically, those who did not receive their annual flu shot were 58% more likely to be admitted to the emergency department and 20% more likely to be treated in intensive care. Plus, without the flu shot, they were 58% more likely to have a stroke, 45% more likely to develop sepsis, and 40% more likely to develop blood clots.

The study found no association between influenza vaccination and the risk of death from COVID-19.

Tel Aviv University researcher Dr Oren Kobiler suggested that the intranasal influenza vaccine might activate the immune system around the nasopharynx and therefore offer better protection against other viruses, including corona. . But he said, “I wouldn’t expect it to last that long.”

He said the flu and the coronavirus are “unrelated at all,” other than they both infect the upper respiratory tract and then travel down to the lungs.

“If the body is able to limit the infection to only the upper respiratory tract, then maybe they won’t have lung damage and so on,” Kobiler said.

But he warned that while the flu vaccine may alleviate some of the side effects of the virus, “it is also not protective” against the capture of COVID.

“The results look interesting, but I’m not sure they are indeed as significant as [the researchers] tried to put it on, ”he said.

Likewise, Professor Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunology laboratory at Bar-Ilan University, described the results as nothing more than “intriguing.”

“From a biological standpoint, there is little resemblance between the flu and the SARS-Cov-2 viruses,” Cohen pointed out. “Sometimes we know that when two viruses are quite close – two strains of influenza or two strains of SARS – there can be some protective cross-immunity. Here it does not appear to be the case.

On the contrary, he said that one could speculate that the flu vaccine, especially if taken repeatedly every year, could boost the immune system in general and therefore be more active in fighting diseases. serious. Or it could improve the function of large reactive immune cells.