Flu Vaccine Increases Your Risk of Infecting Others by 6-Fold, Study Suggests

Flu Vaccine Increases Your Risk of Infecting Others by 6-Fold, Study Suggests

GreenMedInfo Research Group

[snip]
...The study found that flu carriers exhale significant quantities of infectious influenza virus, and that counterintuitively, sneezing is rare and not important for influenza virus aerosolization; nor is coughing required to transmit these particles. Simply breathing will do. Additionally, the study found that males shed influenza viruses in greater quantity than females through fine aerosols, and women cough more frequently. But what is most salient about the study was the following finding:

"6.3 (95% CI 1.9–21.5) times more aerosol shedding among cases with vaccination in the current and previous season compared with having no vaccination in those two seasons."

For more details on the study design read the following:


"We screened 355 symptomatic volunteers with acute respiratory illness and report 142 cases with confirmed influenza infection who provided 218 paired nasopharyngeal (NP) and 30-minute breath samples (coarse >5-µm and fine ≤5-µm fractions) on days 1–3 after symptom onset. We assessed viral RNA copy number for all samples and cultured NP swabs and fine aerosols.

We recovered infectious virus from 52 (39%) of the fine aerosols and 150 (89%) of the NP swabs with valid cultures. The geometric mean RNA copy numbers were 3.8 × 104/30-minutes fine-, 1.2 × 104/30-minutes coarse-aerosol sample, and 8.2 × 108 per NP swab. Fine- and coarse-aerosol viral RNA were positively associated with body mass index and number of coughs and negatively associated with increasing days since symptom onset in adjusted models.

Fine-aerosol viral RNA was also positively associated with having influenza vaccination for both the current and prior season. NP swab viral RNA was positively associated with upper respiratory symptoms and negatively associated with age but was not significantly associated with fine- or coarse-aerosol viral RNA or their predictors. Sneezing was rare, and sneezing and coughing were not necessary for infectious aerosol generation. Our observations suggest that influenza infection in the upper and lower airways are compartmentalized and independent."



Clearly, if this finding is accurate and reproducible, flu vaccination may actually make you more likely to infect others.

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Last Edited by Elegant Walnut on 01/31/2018 10:40 AM