WASHINGTON - Giving four times the usual dose of flu vaccine helps protect elderly people better than the usual dose, researchers said.
Recent research has shown the standard flu vaccine does not reduce deaths noticeably among the elderly, who account for most of the 36,000 people who die from the disease yearly in the US.
Dr. Ann Falsey and her colleagues at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry tried giving a much bigger dose of flu vaccine.
They tested the idea on 3,800 volunteers 65 and older and found their bodies produced up to twice as many antibodies compared to seniors given the usual dose, the researchers told a joint meeting of the American Society for Microbiology and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The study was paid for by flu-vaccine maker Sanofi Pasteur, which hopes to license the higher-dose shots for older patients.
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