A team of researchers in a recently conducted study has found that senior citizens get better protection when younger adults are vaccinated. The team suggested that everyone needs to gets flu vaccine to provide protection to those who are at high risk.

The team found that people above the age of 65 were less likely to come down with serious flu-like illness when younger adults in their community have received flu vaccinations.

Lead author of the study Glen Taksler of the Cleveland Clinic, said, "Our findings suggest that flu vaccination should be encouraged among low-risk adults not just for their own benefit, but also for the benefit of higher risk adults in their community, such as the elderly".

Researchers during the study found that when nearly 31% of the younger adults in the community were vaccinated, rates of flu and related illness dropped by 21% among the people at the age of 65.

In the study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases Taksler and his team looked at county-by-county data for 3.3 million Medicare beneficiaries between 2002 and 2010.

They estimated that about one in 20 cases of influenza-related illness in the elderly could have been prevented if more non-elderly adults had received the flu vaccine, Taksler said in a statement.

As per the recommendations given by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention everybody must get vaccinated against flu freshly each year because the immunity wears off and because the flu virus mutates.

Flu killed more than 140 children last season, but in any given year it can kill between 3,000 and 49,000 people, and 80 to 90% of them are over 65.