Effect of a complete nutritional supplement on antibody response to influenza vaccine in elderly people.

What Was Tested

Researchers studied the intervention named in the title in this randomized controlled trial publication.

The impact of influenza infection on morbidity and mortality in the elderly population can be severe.

The researchers investigated the effect of a 7-month nutritional supplementation on antibody response to influenza vaccine in elderly people.

Who Took Part

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Random assignment meant chance, not the researchers, decided who got the intervention named in the title and who got the comparison, which limits bias.

Neither the participants nor the staff measuring them knew who was on the intervention named in the title, so expectations could not easily colour the readings.

The comparison arm used a placebo, so changes seen with the intervention named in the title could be set against what happens without it.

Antibody titers to influenza strains A/Sydney/5/97 (SY), A/Beijing/262/95 (BE), and B/Yamanashi/166/98 (YA) before and 28 days after vaccination were measured.

Age, gender, weight, height, serum albumin, serum prealbumin, hemoglobin, and serum vitamin E at baseline were registered.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Antibody Formation, Dietary Supplements, Influenza Vaccines, Nutritional Status and Vaccination.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized, double-blind and placebo-controlled study.

Its findings take up roughly 5 sentences of the abstract and are left out here on purpose; the source paper is the place to read them.

The publication is from 2002 (The journals of gerontology. Series A, Biological sciences and medical sciences), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.