Efficacy and Safety of Influenza Vaccination to Elderly Patients with Neurological Diseases

Abstract

Influenza vaccination is strongly recommended for the elderly persons. Especially elderly patients with neurological diseases are at the high risk because they have more tendencies to develop pneumonia than healthy elderly persons. We vaccinated 105 elderly patients with neurological diseases (cerebrovascular disease, Parkinson disease etc.) and 134 people of a control group. Both groups were inoculated with influenza HA vaccine once. The HI titer increase in elderly patients with neurological diseases was equally good enough in the control group and no significant differences was shown in both groups. No severe side effects and adverse reactions were observed in the elderly patient group. This study shows that influenza vaccination is effective and safe for elderly patients with neurological diseases as the well as healthy elderly person and the HI titer increase after a single influenza vaccine injection is expected to be effective to protect influenza infection.