A study has patients questioning whether or not they should get their flu shots this year.

After reading numerous articles on this topic, I am confident in saying that the majority of physician services professionals would encourage people to get their flu shots.

“I’d encourage everyone to continue to get their influenza vaccinations,” said Dr. Linda Van Etta, infectious disease specialist at St. Luke’s Hospital.

A Minnesota-based newspaper, “The Duluth News Tribune,” reported that the Dr. Michael Osterholm of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota’s study had suggested that “the flu vaccine is less effective than we may have thought. It concluded the vaccine is about 59 percent effective for people from ages 18 to 65.”

Dr. Van Etta pointed out that the study was not conducted for the purpose of impacting patient care, but rather for research purposes, and what Dr. Osterholm had found is that the flu shot needs to be improved, but that does not mean it is not effective.

“I think even Mike Osterholm and his group would be saddened if that was the take-home message,” Dr. Van Etta said. “They wrote this as a way to stimulate the ongoing research for even better vaccines; but in the meantime, 59 percent — that’s a response more than half of the time. That’s a pretty darn good response.”

In the U.S., less than 50 percent of the adult population got flu shots last year, according to the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention.

“Some people complain that when they did get a flu shot, they still came down with a cold that winter, except the cold was due to a rhinovirus; it wasn’t due to true influenza,” Dr. Van Etta explained. “If you’ve had true influenza A or B, it’s memorable. You know how sick you are. You’re sick in bed. And we find people who had true influenza in the past, they are the first to line up to get the vaccination.”