Swine flu more likely in people who have the seasonal flu jab
The swine flu (H1N1) pandemic that wasn’t still affected quite a few people – and they were more likely to get it if they had been given the standard seasonal flu jab.
People who had had the seasonal flu jab were more than twice as likely to get swine flu, one study of households in Quebec discovered. The risk went from 68 per cent and up to 2.5 times in the study that included 2,700 people, some of whom developed swine flu.
The researchers are not convinced there is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the seasonal flu vaccine and swine flu, but they do suggest that our health guardians need to think more carefully about the vaccine programmes they prepare.
(Source: PLoS Medicine, 2010; 7: e10000258; doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1000258).