The flu vaccine is more worthwhile than ever this year, so if you’re encountering the different versions for the first time, one of them may challenge. Yes, there is a high-dose flu vaccine, and it’s one version ideal for men and women over 65
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Will You Need a High-Dose Flu Shot?
Do Not Let These Fables Distress You Away From a Flu Shot.
Flu shots work and are an advisable way to minimize the likelihood that you’ll find yourself sick this winter.
What does ‘high dose’ mean?
The way a vaccine function is to exhibit one’s immune system to a minimal bit of antigen. The antigen is something that the immune system can understand and later interact with; in many flu vaccines, the antigen is an influenza virus that has been killed and ripped into pieces. (That’s why the flu shot cannot give you the flu.)
As we age, our immune system sometimes doesn’t respond as strongly as it did when we were younger, so a regular flu vaccine may not spur as strong an immune response as we need for the vaccine to be effective. One way around this is to give more antigen. That’s the idea behind the high-dose shot: it just contains more of those virus pieces. Specifically, four times more.
Side effects are more frequent with the high-dose flu vaccine than with the regular kind, but they’re the same side benefits anyone might get from a flu shot, and like the regular flu shot, they are not usually serious. The CDC says: “The most frequent adverse events experienced during the clinical studies were mild and transient, and included problems, redness at the injection site, headache, muscle soreness, and malaise.”
If I’m over 65, do I need a high-dose flu shot?
The CDC says that any flu shot is fair if approved for people in your age group. But there are two flu vaccines are specifically for adults 65 and older.
The high-dose shot is one, and the other is an adjuvanted vaccine. Alternatively, of a raised dose of the antigen, it includes an adjuvant, an ingredient that makes your immune system reply more strongly. (The adjuvant, in this case, is squalene oil.)
There haven’t been randomized investigations testing these two vaccines to each other, the CDC declares. Still, indications offer that each vaccine works better for people over 65 (preventing the flu and minimizing hospital admissions) than the necessary vaccine.
Complications of the flu are most likely to be deep in older men, with those over 65 accounting for more than half of hospitalizations and over 70% of fatalities, according to a 2013 study. So flu shots are especially important in this age range.
Reference:
Do You Need a High-Dose Flu Shot?. https://vitals.lifehacker.com/do-you-need-a-high-dose-flu-shot-1845169504