Reducing risk of influenza for high-risk children

Evaluation of: Bundy DG, Strouse JJ, Casella JF, Miller MR: Burden of influenza-related hospitalizations among children with sickle cell disease. Pediatrics 125, 234–243 (2010). Children with sickle cell disease (SCD) are particularly vulnerable to invasive bacterial infections. Influenza virus infection multiplies the risk by destroying physical barriers to penetration by bacteria that inhabit the respiratory tract and by further impairing the function of polymorphonuclear leukocytes. Bundy et al. have quantitated the risk of hospitalization of children with SCD with discharge diagnoses including influenza. They accessed the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases for California, Florida, Maryland and New York, USA, to find the cases for the epidemic years 2003–2004 and 2004–2005 and calculated rates for children with SCD, cystic fibrosis or neither. They found that the rates for children with SCD were approximately two-times higher than for those with cystic fibrosis, and 56-times higher than for those with neither.