If your baby was born this month, he or she is less likely to get the flu.

Annual flu vaccination is especially important for young children, who are at higher risk of getting the flu and serious infections that require hospitalization.

Vaccination is recommended in September. or October to maximize immunity during peak flu season. Researchers set out to evaluate the optimal timing of influenza vaccination in young children.

Using health insurance claims data, they identified more than 800,000 children ages 2 to 5 who received a flu vaccine between August 1 and January 31 in 2011–2018. They then analyzed the rate of diagnosed influenza among these children by month of birth.

After taking into account many potentially influential factors such as age, gender, pre-existing conditions, health care use and family sizeThe results show that October was the most common month for childhood vaccinations.

Children born in October also had the lowest rates of flu. For example, among children born in August, the average incidence of influenza in the flu seasons studied was 3%, compared with 2.7% for children born in October and 2.9% for children born in August born in December.

This is about observational study

and the authors acknowledge that their results are limited to insured children who received medical care. They also cannot rule out the possibility that other unmeasured factors may have influenced their results.