High-Risk Individuals Are Urged to Go for Flu Shots

The risk of influenza leading to a fatal case of pneumonia, especially among older people, can be significantly decreased by the flu vaccine.

“Prevention is of utmost importance for people over 65, and those with lung disease and other illnesses,” said Dr. Joseph Lowy, a lung specialist at New York University Medical Center.

Everyone in these high-risk groups should get a flu shot before peak flu season, which runs from October through March, he urged.

“For young and healthy people, neither flu nor pneumonia are life-threatening,” Lowy said. “For older, ill and immune-compromised people, pneumonia is a common and dangerous complication of flu.”

Pneumonia is the most common cause of death from infections and the sixth-leading cause of death in the United States.

More than 10,000 people died in each of the 19 flu epidemics from 1957 to 1986. In several, the number was as high as 40,000. Nearly 90% of those who died were over 65.

The vaccine, made from killed virus, is reformulated every year to make it likelier to be effective against that year’s prevailing viruses.

There is also a vaccine against pneumococcus, the pneumonia-causing bacteria that commonly affect older people. One inoculation gives lifelong protection.

Lowy explained that pneumonia is a general term to describe an infection of the lung caused by one of several agents, bacteria and viruses the most common.

The influenza virus can cause viral pneumonia or it can lower a person’s resistance to subsequent bacterial infection.

Bacteria and viruses are introduced into the lungs constantly, but most people can usually fight them off. An older or ill person is less able to clear the lungs of microbes.

Lowy recommends that medical attention be sought if these symptoms persist for more than a few days.