Study supports routine vaccination of children against flu

According to a new study childhood influenza is much more common in the USA than previously thought and more often than not doctors often fail to diagnose it in young children.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center found that 5.6 percent of children under age 5 living around Nashville, Tennessee, Cincinnati, Ohio, and Rochester, New York, had influenza during the 2002-2003 winter season.

But the following year - 2003-2004, the number more than doubled to 12.2 percent, and doctors made the correct flu diagnosis less than 28 percent of the time.

Influenza is a contagious respiratory virus and there has been a push in recent years for children to be vaccinated against it.

In February of this year an advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children aged 6 months to 5 years should receive it.

Some doctors now think older children should also be vaccinated and some experts believe all school aged children should be vaccinated as a matter of course at school clinics then even uninsured children would get the shots.

The researchers say as so few influenza infections are recognized clinically the burden of dealing with the infection each year may be eased through vaccination as preventing the virus would reduce the "substantial cost" of treating it.

Katherine Poehling, a pediatrician who led the study, says many doctors diagnose children with a viral illness other than the flu and other viruses which can appear very similar are common during flu seasons.

The Vanderbilt group tested only children with symptoms so severe that they were taken to a clinic or an emergency room.

The study is published in the New England Journal of Medicine, 6 July issue.