Statin Use and Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness in Persons > 65 Years of Age, Taiwan

• Published in: Emerging infectious diseases Vol. 26; no. 6; pp. 1243 - 1250
• Main Authors: Tsai, Lung-Wen, Chen, Yung-Tai, Shih, Chia-Jen, Ou, Shuo-Ming, Chao, Pei-Wen, Lo, Shih-Hsiu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases 01.06.2020; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Subjects: Age; Ambulatory care; Analysis; Cardiovascular disease; critical illness; Diabetes; Hospitalization; Hospitals; Illnesses; Influenza; Influenza vaccines; National health insurance; Older people; Online databases; Pneumonia; Population; Statin Use and Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness in Persons ≥ 65 Years of Age, Taiwan; Statins; Vaccination; vaccine-preventable diseases; Vaccines; viruses; Taiwan; United States > US; influenza; viruses; hospitalization; critical illness; vaccines; Taiwan; respiratory diseases; vaccine-preventable diseases
• ISSN: 1080-6040; 1080-6059; 1080-6059
• DOI: 10.3201/eid2606.190646

Debates on whether statin use reduces the effectiveness of influenza vaccines against critical illness and death among persons >65 years of age continue. We conducted a study of 9,427,392 persons >65 years of age who did and did not receive influenza vaccinations during 12 consecutive influenza seasons, 2000-01 through 2011-12. Using data from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database, we performed propensity score-matching to compare vaccinated persons with unvaccinated controls. After propensity score-matching, the vaccinated group had lower risks for in-hospital death from influenza and pneumonia and for hospitalization for pneumonia and influenza, circulatory conditions, and critical illnesses compared with the unvaccinated group. We stratified the 2 groups by statin use and analyzed data by interaction analysis and saw no statistically significant difference. We found that influenza vaccine effectively reduced risks for hospitalization and death in persons >65 years of age, regardless of statin use.