Healthy And Young People Are Often Ill H1N1 Flu

Healthy And Young People Are Often Ill H1N1 Flu.
A year after the H1N1 flu chief appeared, the World Health Organization has issued c the most encyclopedic report on the pandemic's activity to date. "Here's the definitive reference that shows in black-and-white what many bodies have said in meetings and talked about," said Dr John Treanor, a professor of panacea and of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York. The H1N1 flu disproportionately attacked children and young adults, not the older adults normally captivated by the traditional flu, states the report, which appears in the May 6 children of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The review offers few new insights, said Dr Len Horovitz, a pulmonary professional with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, exclude "that pregnant women were more at risk in the second and third trimesters and the finding that tubbiness and morbid obesity were also risk factors. Obesity is something that has not been associated with influenza deaths before".

The best-seller virus first appeared in Mexico in the spring of 2009. It has since spread around the world resulting in "the first influenza pandemic since 1968 with circulation outside the usual influenza age in the Northern Hemisphere," the report's authors said.

As of March 2010, the virus has hit almost every country in the world, resulting in 17700 known deaths. By February of this year, some 59 million colonize in the United States were hit with the bug, 265000 of who were hospitalized and 12,000 of whom died, the article stated. Fortunately, most of the disability tied to infection with H1N1 has remained somewhat mild, comparatively speaking.

The overall infection compute is estimated at 11 percent and mortality of those infected at 0,5 percent. "It didn't have the affable of global impact on mortality we might have seen with a more virulent epidemic but it did have a very substantial impact on health-care resources. Although the mortality was slash than you would expect in a pandemic, that mortality did occur very much in younger people so if you gaze at it in terms of years of life lost, it becomes very significant".

Protection From H1N1 Flu Is The Same As From Seasonal Flu

Protection From H1N1 Flu Is The Same As From Seasonal Flu.
The blockbuster H1N1 flu seems to appropriate many characteristics with the seasonal flu it has pretty much replaced, a new study indicates. "Our results are further confirmation that 2009 pandemic H1N1 and seasonal flu have nearly the same transmission dynamics. People seem to be similarly transmissible when ill with either pandemic or seasonal flu, and the viruses are likely to spread in similar ways," said Benjamin Cowling, escort author of a study appearing in the June 10 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The favourable news is that this means the preventive measures health authorities have been recommending, such as ordinary hand washing, should be equally effective against pandemic flu. "Influenza is very difficult to contain, but in the air measures including the availability of pandemic H1N1 vaccines should be able to mitigate the worst of any further epidemics," added Cowling, who is an helper professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong.

Cowling and his colleagues followed 284 household members of 99 individuals who had tested incontestable for H1N1. Eight percent of the household contacts also hew ill with the H1N1 virus, about the same transmission rate as seen for the seasonal flu (9 percent), the researchers found.

Viral shedding (when the virus replicates and leaves the body), as well as the prototype of tangible sickness, were also similar for the two types of flu. The "attack rate" (meaning the suitableness of people in the entire population who get sick) for H1N1 was higher than that for seasonal flu and the balance was most pronounced among children. The authors hypothesized that this might be due to the fact that younger tribe seem to have lower natural immunity to the virus.

H1N1 Flu Is A Serious Threat For Children In The 2010-2011 Influenza Season

H1N1 Flu Is A Serious Threat For Children In The 2010-2011 Influenza Season.
Among children hospitalized with the pandemic H1N1 flu most recent year in California, more than one-fourth ended up in thorough concern units or died, California Department of Public Health researchers report. "While hospitalization for 2009 H1N1 influenza in children appeared to happen at comparable rates as with seasonal influenza, this study provides further demonstrate that children, especially those with high-risk conditions, can be very ill with H1N1," said lead researcher Dr Janice K Louie. "Fortunately, not many children died. Those that did had many underlying conditions. Antiviral medication given inappropriate seems to have lessened the bet of severe illness," she added.

Young people were hit hard by H1N1 flu, with 10- to 18-year-olds accounting for 40 percent of cases, the researchers noted. This was most apt to due to a dearth of immunity, which older people acquired through repeated flu vaccinations of numerous strains of H1N1 or exposure to other H1N1 strains, the experts pointed out.

Flu experts don't preclude the H1N1 flu will pose a serious threat in the 2010-2011 flu season, but the review authors say doctors should promptly treat children with underlying risk factors, especially infants, who get the flu. "My compassionate is that we are over the hump," said Dr Marc Siegel, an associate professor of medicament at New York University in New York City. "I am expecting this to be share of the seasonal flu this year, unless it mutates," he said.

The many people exposed to the H1N1 flu and the sizable tons vaccinated against it have created a large herd immunity, which should blunt this flu strain, Siegel said. In addition, the coeval seasonal flu vaccine, which is recommended for each and every one 6 months old and up, contains protection from H1N1 flu, he noted.