influenza
mikethemadbiologist | April 27, 2009Republican Senator Susan Collins went along with Karl Rove and cut or eliminated funding from the stimulus package for pandemic influenza spending. While Democratic Congressman Obey was able to restore $50 million for infection reporting, all state and local funding was eliminated. Nicely done, 'moderate' Senator Collins (italics mine):
Did Rove, Collins and their compatriots want a pandemic?
Of course not.
They were just playing politics, in the exceptionally narrow and irresponsible manner that characterized the Republican response to the stimulus debate - and that, because of Democratic…
tsmith | April 27, 2009As expected, new potential cases are being investigated in several states, including an additional possible case in Northern California, 2 potential cases in Indiana, a potential case in Ohio and another in Michigan [updated: and some in Massachusetts too]. New York has also confirmed 20 cases now, and 17 more are suspected (check here for additional information--updated as new cases come in and are confirmed or ruled out). Around the world, four in France have apparently tested negative, as have two potential cases in Australia, while 2 in Scotland have been confirmed positive. In Mexico…
tsmith | April 27, 2009For those of you looking to follow new cases (most of them suspected at this point, not confirmed), a great resource is HealthMap. Reports are popping up of possible infections worldwide: Scotland, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand. Certainly additional possible cases will be showing up over the coming days as well.
One thing I've seen mentioned (including here in the comments) is a question about the unlikelihood of a flu outbreak in Mexico in late April. Isn't influenza a cold-weather bug? Well, yes and no. Influenza circulates year-round at a low level, but it lasts longer in the…
palmd | April 26, 2009With all the news abuzz about swine flu, it's important to remember a few things. Influenza can be very, very dangerous, but it's still just a virus, and one that we know quite well. There have been a number of flu pandemics in the last century, the most famous (and most deadly) being the "Spanish flu" of 1918-1919. That pandemic was a perfect storm. Soldiers moved back and forth between Europe and the U.S., and military bases in the U.S. weren't much better than the Western Front. Soldiers on U.S. bases lived in crowded, cold, wet conditions, and the flu moved through them rapidly,…
palmd | April 26, 2009So far, it looks like the US Gov't is on top of this one. If you're interested in following along with the story, I strongly suggest following the Effect Measure blog. The writers know their stuff, and so far, government websites aren't all that much health.
Some basics:
As you remember, the flu virus changes over time due to "antigenic drift" and we need to make new vaccines every year. Sometimes, often due to multiple strains co-infecting the same animal, the influenza genome undergoes a more dramatic change called "antigenic shift". Influenza A is commonly found in birds, pigs, and…
tsmith | April 26, 2009While there's interest and some new readers, I figured I'd link some of my older posts on swine influenza and pandemic influenza in general for some additional background information and history. Keep in mind that these are unrelated to the current outbreak.
Pandemic influenza series (a bit dated, but still some good information in there, including an overview of 20th century pandemics).
Asymptomatic swine flu infections in farmers
Swine flu in Ohio fairgoers
Iowan has swine flu
New swine influenza virus detected
Masks and influenza
Masks and influenza part II
tsmith | April 26, 2009According to new information from the CDC, in addition to the 2 cases in Texas, 7 in California, and 2 in Kansas, the 8 in New York have now been confirmed, and an additional case has also been confirmed in Ohio (I've not seen any info on that case)--UPDATED below. Investigations are apparently ongoing in at least 2 Canadian provinces, also (British Columbia and Nova Scotia). An investigation is also ongoing in New Zealand after teenagers took a trip to Mexico and have shown flu-like symptoms.
Concerning to say the least, but crof and revere both have some excellent posts to keep things…
tsmith | April 26, 2009Over the last 24 hours, I've received a few comments and even more emails asking about or discussing the possibility of a "cytokine storm" triggered by the H1N1 swine flu reassortant. Is this what's happening in the cases from Mexico? Discussion after the jump...
Let me begin with a bit of background on what's meant by a "cytokine storm." In response to infection, the body has a number of ways to fight back against the invading microbe. Cytokines are one part of this defense. These are molecules produced by a number of different types of cells in response to infection that act as signals…
gregladen | April 25, 2009Here is a brief summary of what we seem to know now.
The World Health Organization reports that in the US there have been seven confirmed cases of Swine Influenza A/H1N1 in humans, wtih 5 in California and two in Texas. In addition, there are another nine spuspected cases. These were generally not severe, and no one has died.
Less traditional and less reliable sources have suggested that there are a large number of cases of type A flu (not necessarily the swine flue) in Queens New York, perhaps something like 100, and two cases in Kansas. If these are real, they will probably be reported…
tsmith | April 25, 2009Sorry for the radio silence--I've been working on grants and manuscripts like a fiend, and so have tried to limit as many distractions as possible (which, unfortunately, includes blogging). However, the swine flu news is right up my alley, so I do just want to say a few words about it, and point you to some excellent stories already up elsewhere.
First, in case you've not been paying attention to the news in the last few days, there have been 8 reported cases of swine influenza infections in humans (6 in California and 2 in Texas, with additional suspected cases) and reports from Mexico…
palmd | February 19, 2009It's been a slow flu season this year---until now. In the last week I've seen people dragging themselves into the office looking like absolute hell---fevers, cough, severe muscle aches---in other words, they've got the flu.
The latest CDC data shows a marked increase in flu activity.
A large percentage of isolates are influenza A, type H1N1, which is currently resistant to one of our antiviral medications oseltamivir (Tamiflu). Of 110 influenza isolates collected so far in Michigan this season, 74 are A(H1N1). The strain is still susceptible to zanamivir (Relenza), rimantadine, and…
gregladen | February 14, 2009For the last couple of decades, perhaps beginning around the time of the publication of Laurie Garret's excellent thesis (The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance) on disease and politics and continuting through Gina Kolata's "Flu: The Story Of The Great Influenza Pandemic" there has been increased attention on the 1918 flu virus and pandemic, as well as subsequent outbreaks. This interest has probably been fueled by increased knowledge of (or incidence of?) tragic and highly newsworthy outbreaks of Ebola, SARS, and so on. More recently, the perception has grown…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2009In the midst of the Conservative War on Contraception, there's a broader assault by conservatives on public health initiatives. At Salon, Alex Koppelman does a good job rebutting the conservative opposition to vaccination, infection control, and figuring out if someone has AIDS (further fisking is available from IDSA). There's no reason to repeat this fine work, but it really does highlight just how unserious movement conservatives have become.
This mindless backlash reminds me of Michael Fumento, and his opposition to influenza prevention:
In my post, I challenged him to offer alternative…
amillikan | December 16, 2008As the time of the year approaches when influenza virus is most rampantly transmitted, ScienceBloggers are assesing current influenza vaccination practices and questioning how shortcomings in them could play out in a pandemic situation, which experts predict could arise in the near future. To help prevent contracting the flu this season, ScienceBogger PalMd advises frequent hand washing.
mikethemadbiologist | December 14, 2008Over at What's New in Life Science Research, I have a post about how screwed up it is to be worrying about bioterrorism when we can't even handle annual influenza.
I've turned off comments here, so go comment over there.
mikethemadbiologist | October 13, 2008I've said this many times before, but it's worth repeating again: whether it's an influenza pandemic, or 'just' annual influenza (which, in the U.S., kills double the number of people as HIV/AIDS), what actually does the killing is the secondary bacterial infection, not the virus.
A recent review describes the result of a large series of autoposies of victims from the 1918 pandemic (as well as later pandemics). The main finding (italics mine):
Their findings are striking in the context of modern conceptions of the 1918 pandemic; the great majority of deaths could be attributed to secondary…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2008There are two excellent papers in the August edition of Emerging Infectious Diseases (open access) about influenza that suggest alternative (or parallel) ways of dealing with an influenza pandemic (note: by "alternative", I don't mean woo). The standard response that is typically discussed is an influenza vaccine--and I've mentioned before how important it is to increase our influenza vaccination surge capacity (not only is it good for dealing with a pandemic, but could serve as a source of vaccine production against the annual epidemic).
There's a problem with this strategy.
We can't be…
mikethemadbiologist | May 13, 2008According to a recent Applied and Environmental Microbiology paper, influenza viruses are able to survive on banknotes. Lookie, bar graphs:
(from the paper) Duration of infectiousness according to the size of the initial inoculum and the presence or absence of mucus. Influenza A/Moscow/10/99 (H3N2) virus was deposited in triplicate on banknotes at the following concentrations, each in the presence (H3m) or absence (H3) of respiratory mucus: (A) 8.9 x 10e5 TCID50/ml; (B) 4.4 x 10e5 TCID50/ml; (C) 2.2 x 10e5 TCID50/ml; (D) 1.1 x 10e5 TCID50/ml. (E) Similarly, influenza B/Hong Kong/335/2001…
mikethemadbiologist | May 4, 2008Several of my fellow ScienceBloglings have noted that the increase in measles cases is due to idiots who refuse to get vaccinated. Beyond the obvious health threat this represents, there is a more subtle, yet equally murderous effect of all of this anti-vax woo.
It distracts us from other vaccination programs that we need to institute. Every year, roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from influenza--the 'boring' kind. Why this isn't viewed as a major health crisis, while breast cancer, which kills approximately the same number annually, is escapes me. Not because breast cancer isn't an awful…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2008Several people have argued that if an influenza pandemic were to occur, it will rapidly evolve to become less virulent--that is less deadly. A recent paper explains why this might be wrong.
Basically, the flaw with the 'optimistic' argument is that it is assumes that the virus will be optimally fit given its environment (lots of fat, juicy hosts to kill). As it starts to kill off its hosts, its virulence (ability to make dead people or 'deadliness') and transmission rate (ability to infect new hosts) will decrease to another optimal point where the virus will be able to maximize its…