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Lucina
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Does repeated influenza vaccination attenuate effectiveness?

It appears to be so. We all have our annual ‘influenza jab’. Lucina found it fascinating that it appears that if you have a regular influenza vaccine it may reduce the vaccine’s effectiveness. Jones-Grey E et al ( Lancet Resp Med 2022) have completed a systematic review and meta-analysis from MEDLINE, EMBASE, and CINAHL articles published from 1 Jan 2016 to 13 June 2022, and Web of Science for studies published from database inception to 13 June 2022. For studies published before 1 Jan 2016, they consulted published systematic reviews. In keeping with good systematic review methodology, two reviewers independently screened, extracted data using a data collection form, assessed studies' risk of bias using and evaluated the weight of evidence by Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE). They included observational studies and randomised controlled trials that reported vaccine effectiveness against influenza using four vaccination groups: current season; previous season; current and previous seasons; and neither season. For each study, they calculated the absolute difference in vaccine effectiveness (ΔVE) for current season only and previous season only versus current and previous season vaccination to estimate attenuation associated with repeated vaccination. They identified 4979 publications, selected 681 for …

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  • Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.