For health care workers, it pays to be the early bird when it comes to getting the flu shot – doing so may lead to fewer flu symptoms and less time away from work, a Mexican study reveals.

Research done by Dr. Adrian Camacho-Ortiz and his team at the University Hospital Dr. Jose Eleuterio Gonzalez in Mexico found that health care workers who were vaccinated earlier in the season exhibited less flu-like symptoms and were less likely to call in sick and lose their working days.

“It’s a straightforward phenomenon: it takes three weeks for antibodies to develop, thus the earlier you get vaccinated the better,” said Dr. Camacho-Ortiz, adding that their study offered scarce proof of this, particularly among those who provide health care themselves.

The team’s findings were published Nov. 13 in the American Journal of Infection Control.

More Absences, Flu-Like Symptoms in the First Year

Analyzing data from almost 6,200 health care workers spanning two flu seasons at a Mexican teaching hospital, the team saw that vaccines were given late during the first season (September 2013 to April 2014) than during the following one, from 2014 to this year.

According to the results, about 59 percent of the studied health care providers got the flu vaccine in each of the two seasons. However, a mere 23 percent of those vaccinated during the first year were inoculated by November’s start, two months into the season. In the second year, the same was done on 56 percent.

The researchers noted that the difference may lie partly in vaccine promotion efforts in the second flu season.

The results: fewer subjects vaccinated early in the first year translated to more absences, particularly 52 in the first year versus just 15 the next. There were more total days of lost work: 218 in the first year and 68 in the next.

As for flu-like symptoms, 49 vaccinated workers experienced them in the first year compared to only 24 the following one. However, there was no difference in the number of vaccinated subjects with confirmed flu cases.

A limitation of the study is that the flu shot was less effective during the second season, and authors believed that contrary to their findings, this should have raised the rate of those with flu-like symptoms and confirmed illnesses during that period.

Common Flu Shot Misconceptions

What is hindering health care workers from getting inoculated? One is the typical belief that one can be stricken with influenza from getting the flu shot, said researcher Sherri LaVela at Chicago’s Northwestern University.

LaVela, who was not part of the study, said many groups with institutionalized mandatory vaccine efforts had reaped great improvements in their health care workers vaccination rates.

A threat that goes beyond lost work is the possibility of infecting patients, warned Mary Lou Manning, a researcher from the College of Nursing of Thomas Jefferson University.

“There is also evidence to suggest that when hospital workers get vaccinated, community flu rates decline,” Manning said.

Over 200,000 Americans are hospitalized from flu complications every year, as part of the millions every season that suffer from a fever, sore throat, cough, muscle ache, fatigue, and other flu symptoms.

The flu can also spell death – flu-linked deaths in the U.S. are estimated at 3,000 to 49,000 from 1976 to 2006.

Photo: Daniel Paquet | Flickr