Cantarutti Anna, Barbieri Elisa, Didonè Fabio, Scamarcia Antonio, Giaquinto Carlo, Corrao Giovanni
National Centre for Healthcare Research and Pharmacoepidemiology, Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milan, Italy.
Unit of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Public Health, Department of Statistics and Quantitative Methods, University of Milano-Bicocca, 20126 Milan, Italy.
Vaccines (Basel). 2022 Apr 10;10(4):582. doi: 10.3390/vaccines10040582.
Seasonal influenza can cause serious morbidity, mortality, and financial burden in pediatric and adult populations. The influenza vaccine (IV) is considered the most effective way to prevent influenza and influenza-like-illness (ILI) complications.
To assess the effectiveness of the IV in a cohort of healthy children in Italy.
From the Pedianet database, all healthy children aged six months-14 years between 2009-2019 were enrolled. Cox proportional-hazards models were fitted to estimate hazard ratios and the 95% confidence interval for the association between IV exposure during each season of interest (from October to April of each year) with incident influenza/ILI. Exposure was considered as a time-varying variable. Vaccine effectiveness (VE) was calculated as (1-HR) × 100. The additive and prolonged effects of IV were evaluated across the seasons.
We found a high IV effectiveness among healthy children. No additional or prolonged effects were found.
Our data indicates that IV was effective in preventing influenza/ILI in healthy children. Therefore, IV should be encouraged and provided free of charge to healthy children in all the Italian regions every year, reducing disease spread and lowering the burden on the pediatric population.
季节性流感可在儿童和成人人群中导致严重的发病、死亡及经济负担。流感疫苗（IV）被认为是预防流感及流感样疾病（ILI）并发症的最有效方式。
评估IV在意大利一组健康儿童中的有效性。
从儿科网络数据库中，纳入2009年至2019年间所有6个月至14岁的健康儿童。采用Cox比例风险模型来估计风险比及各感兴趣季节（每年10月至次年4月）期间IV暴露与流感/ILI发病之间关联的95%置信区间。暴露被视为一个随时间变化的变量。疫苗有效性（VE）计算为（1 - HR）×100。对IV在各季节的累加和延长效应进行了评估。
我们发现健康儿童中IV有效性较高。未发现额外或延长效应。
我们的数据表明IV在预防健康儿童流感/ILI方面有效。因此，应鼓励并每年为意大利所有地区的健康儿童免费提供IV，以减少疾病传播并减轻儿科人群的负担。
