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Observational Study
. 2024 Dec 2;42(26):126244.
doi: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2024.126244. Epub 2024 Sep 14.

Measuring the impact of influenza vaccination in the Netherlands using retrospective observational primary care, hospitalisation and mortality data

Marianne J Heins  1 , Peter Spreeuwenberg  1 , Saverio Caini  1 , Mariëtte Hooiveld  2 , Adam Meijer  3 , John Paget  1
Affiliations
Free article
Observational Study

Measuring the impact of influenza vaccination in the Netherlands using retrospective observational primary care, hospitalisation and mortality data

Marianne J Heins et al. Vaccine. .
Free article

Abstract

We aimed to estimate the impact of influenza vaccination in the Netherlands using general practitioner medical records for 2011-2020. We found that vaccinees had higher consultation rates for influenza-like-illness, acute respiratory infections, and pneumonia, as well as antibiotic use, hospitalisations, and several control diagnoses (i.e. illnesses for which there was no a priori expectation that influenza vaccination would play a protective effect). We found similar rates for respiratory mortality and lower all-cause mortality in the vaccinees versus non-vaccinees, mainly driven by the 75+ age group. These results expand, but are fairly consistent with those of previous investigations, and highlight the difficulty of using registry data to assess the impact of vaccination, because of underlying differences between vaccinees and non-vaccinees. Whether these biases also play a role for hospitalisations and mortality remains unclear. Our findings support the implementation of randomized studies to assess the impact of influenza vaccination.

Keywords: Bias; Health outcomes; Influenza; Observational data; Vaccination.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest This study was funded by ZonMw under research grant 10150511910033. The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: John Paget reports a relationship with World Health Organization that includes: funding grants. John Paget reports a relationship with Sanofi that includes: funding grants. John Paget reports a relationship with Foundation for Influenza Epidemiology that includes: funding grants. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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