In a surprise twist, authors here retracted findings of a study that found N95 respirators were better than surgical masks at preventing flu.

After a re-analysis prompted by questions from reviewers, the findings were no longer significant, said Holly Seale of the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.

The original study, presented earlier this year, formed the basis of several important policy decisions, including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance on the use of masks in a health care setting.

The retraction — near the end of a presentation at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America — prompted a “rush to the microphones” by those involved in flu prevention, one expert said.

The findings appeared to differ — not only from previous reports, but also from the abstract submitted to this meeting, said Dr. Andrew Pavia of the University of Utah.

Seale acknowledged those differences and agreed that the original results no longer stand. She was not immediately available for additional comment.

The lead author of the study, Raina MacIntyre, also of the University of New South Wales, did not attend the meeting here.

The retraction took experts here by surprise, although many had been critical of some statistical aspects of the study, according to Dr. Neil Fishman of the University of Pennsylvania.

“I think there was little bit of shock that there was such a large change (in the results),” he told MedPage Today after the session.

The study was first presented in San Francisco earlier this year and led to important policy decisions in the United States.

Among other things, it influenced an Institute of Medicine recommendation that health care workers caring for flu patients should use the more expensive N95 respirators.

For pregnant women, an influenza vaccination leads to bigger babies and infants who are less likely to get the flu, according to three studies presented here.

Experts said the findings — presented at the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America — might help persuade pregnant women reluctant to get a flu shot.

It might also bring the issue to the attention of obstetricians, who typically do not raise the notion of a flu shot with their patients, said Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease specialist and chair of Preventive Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

“This is powerful information for obstetricians and pregnant women to have,” said Schaffner, who moderated a news conference at which the studies were discussed.

The findings are all the more persuasive, he said, because different investigators, using varied methods, “all came out with the same answer.”

The issue is important, according to Dr. Marietta Vazquez, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Yale University School of Medicine, because the proportion of pregnant women who are vaccinated against the flu is “dismal” — fewer than one in four, she and others said.

Vazquez and colleagues conducted a study of infants admitted to their hospital, starting in 2000. Infants with confirmed flu were the cases, and for comparison they each were matched with two babies who were admitted for other reasons.

Proof in the Numbers

The goal of the study is to compare the mothers — using both questionnaires and medical records — to see if they were vaccinated during their pregnancies, Vazquez said.

For the 119 women with complete medical records and an infant with the flu, only 5 percent had been vaccinated, the researchers found. By contrast, of the 172 mothers of control infants, 16 percent had been vaccinated.

The numbers suggested that flu vaccine given to mothers during pregnancy is effective in preventing hospitalization of their infants, Vazquez said.

Specifically, for all nonvaccinated infants, the effectiveness was 80.4 percent.

Vazquez said the results might help persuade more women to get vaccinated. “If they’re not getting vaccinated for themselves,” she said, “maybe they’ll do it for their babies.”