Archive for the ‘NEWS’ Category
Influenza Vaccination of Children – Risk for MORE Susceptibility?!
Posted in Immunology, NEWS, VIROLOGY on November 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »
References:
1 Bodewes R, Kreijtz JHCM, Baas C, et al. Vaccination against human influenza A/H3N2 virus prevents the induction of heterosubtypic immunity against lethal infection with avian influenza A/H5N1 virus. PLoS One 2009;4: e5538.
2 Heikkinen T, Silvennoinen H, Peltola V, et al. Burden of infl uenza in children in the community. J Infect Dis 2004; 190: 1369–73.
3 Poehling KA, Edwards KM, Weinberg GA, et al. The underrecognized burden of influenza in young children. N Engl J Med 2006; 355: 31–40.
4 Gilsdorf A, Poggensee G, on behalf of the working group pandemic influenza A(H1N1)v. Infl uenza A(H1N1)v in Germany: the first 10,000 cases. Euro Surveill 2009; 14: pii=19318.
5 CDC. Seasonal infl uenza—weekly report: infl uenza summary update. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009. http://www.cdc.gov/fl u/weekly/ (accessed Oct 12, 2009).
6 Garcia-Garcia L, Valdespino-Gómez JL, Lazcano-Ponce E, et al. Partial protection of seasonal trivalent inactivated vaccine against novel pandemic influenza A/H1N1 2009: case-control study in Mexico City. BMJ 2009; published online Oct 6. DOI:10.1136/bmj.b3928.
7 Glezen WP. Emerging infections: pandemic influenza. Epidemiol Rev 1996;18: 64–76.
8 Belshe RB, Edwards KM, Vesikari T, et al. Live attenuated versus inactivated infl uenza vaccine in infants and young children. N Engl J Med 2007;356: 685–96.
9 CDC. Seasonal influenza—recommendations for using TIV and LAIV during the 2009–10 influenza season. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2009. http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/acip/
recommendations.htm (accessed Oct 12, 2009).
10 Heikkinen T, Booy R, Campins M, et al. Should healthy children be vaccinated against infl uenza? Eur J Pediatr 2006; 165: 223–28
Safety of Pandemic Vaccines
Posted in Immunology, NEWS, VIROLOGY on November 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Dear ViroMag Readers, Peace!
I’m back, and thanks for not going away!
Here is a WHO page on “Safety of Pandemic Vaccines”, where “WHO has received vaccination information from 16 of around 40 countries conducting national H1N1 pandemic vaccine campaigns.” and here are the results
Finally, WHO report concludes “Although intense monitoring of vaccine safety continues, all data compiled to date indicate that pandemic vaccines match the excellent safety profile of seasonal influenza vaccines, which have been used for more than 60 years.“
Note: For those who hold the conspiracy theory approach and do not believe such publications, sorry, I can’t help
Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 lives in some people for at least eight days after symptoms develop!
Posted in NEWS, VIROLOGY on November 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »
My Dear Readers, Peace!
“The pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus remains alive on the eighth day in 8%–13% of people after they develop flu symptoms, a team of Quebec researchers has determined.
Dr. Guy Boivin of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Quebec and Dr. Gaston De Serres of Quebec’s Public Health Institute tested members of 65 families in Quebec who contracted the virus from May through July. Their findings, part of a larger study looking at whether asymptomatic people have pandemic (H1N1) 2009, are intended to guide public health officials who are trying to reduce the spread of the virus.
De Serres and Boivin tested 173 people enrolled in the study 8 days and 10 days after they first presented with symptoms. On day 10, they were not detecting live virus in any of the 43 laboratory-confirmed cases of people with the virus.
The results of the study indicate that a large number of people with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 are still contagious after their fever breaks, and at least a proportion of people with the virus may be able to transmit it to others for a day or two longer than those who have seasonal influenza, De Serres says.
“For seasonal influenza, in general, we consider that within seven days, the shedding of the virus should be over,” he says. “With this virus, we see that yes, the shedding of the virus is over for the majority of the people, but there are still people who are potentially contagious on day 8.”
In general, public health authorities advise people with seasonal influenza to wait for 24 hours after their fever has broken before returning to work or school. Currently, that is the advice the US Centers for Disease Control offers on its website to people with pandemic (H1N1) 2009.
But that period of voluntary isolation is not likely to be effective in reducing transmission among at least a segment of those with the virus, says De Serres. “If on day 8, we still have 8%–13% of people having live virus, to go back after two, three or four days (of presenting symptoms) is really too soon.”
Public health officials should advise people how long to stay home, but will have to balance their advice given the societal effects of having large proportions of the population off work and off school if there is an extensive outbreak, De Serres says.
Currently, the Public Health Agency of Canada is advising people who have pandemic H1N1 (2009) to stay home until they are better.
De Serres says people working with vulnerable populations, such as health care workers caring for newborns, need to stay home until the risk of transmission is past. He adds that other members of the general public need to consider whether they are still coughing and sneezing and could spread the virus easily.”
Obesity, A Risk Factor for Swine Flu?!
Posted in Immunology, NEWS, VIROLOGY on November 10, 2009| 2 Comments »
Dear readers, Peace!
Few days ago I was asked about obesity, whether it is a risk factor for increased morbidity/mortality form the current swine flu (H1N1) pandemic strain, and here is what I found (in the news)
“A study in California shows that about a quarter of the people hospitalized for H1N1 complications were morbidly obese, even though less than 5% of the population falls into that category.
Obesity appears to be a risk factor [nearly similar] with pregnancy for developing complications from an infection with pandemic H1N1 influenza, according to the most comprehensive look yet at swine flu hospitalizations
The CDC considers adults to be obese if their body mass index is 30 or above and morbidly obese if their BMI tops 40
About a quarter of those hospitalizations have been for people who were morbidly obese, even though such people make up less than 5% of the population. That fivefold increase in risk is close to the sixfold increase observed in pregnant women, according to the report published today in the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
The researchers found that two-thirds of the obese patients had a health problem that was previously recognized as an underlying risk factor for swine flu. The most common were chronic lung disease, heart disease and diabetes.
“But that still left one-third of obese patients without other risk factors [other than obesity]“, said Dr. Janice K. Louie, lead author of the study and chief of the state health department’s influenza and respiratory syndromes section.
There are many possible explanations;
Some of them are physiological. The lungs of obese patients are compressed because the abdomen presses up on the diaphragm. In addition, the chest wall is heavier, so it’s more difficult for the lungs to stay inflated.
Both of those factors make it difficult for blood and oxygen to travel throughout the lungs and fight off infection, said Dr. Lena Napolitano, chief of acute-care surgery at the University of Michigan Health System. She recently published a report in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on 10 swine flu patients admitted to the intensive care unit there; of the 10, nine were obese, including seven who were morbidly obese.
The compromised immune system of obese people probably also plays a role, said Dr. David Heber, director of the Risk Factor Obesity Program at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. Scientists believe that people who are obese have a baseline level of inflammation that diminishes the body’s ability to fight diseases.
Researchers at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill found that 42% of obese mice died when infected with a human strain of flu, while the same virus killed only 5% of lean mice. The lungs of the obese mice failed to produce two crucial kinds of immune cells called cytokines that fight off viruses. There was also a decrease in natural killer cells and T-cells, two other components of the immune system, said Patricia Sheridan, a nutritional immunologist at UNC who worked on the study.”
I think that Obesity is bad anyway!
Facing Vaccine Shortage
Posted in NEWS on October 25, 2009| 1 Comment »
“Facing a shortage of vaccines, New York State yesterday dropped its mandate for health care workers to get immunized against swine flu.
Without enough H1N1 vaccine to go around, the Empire State opted to prioritize vulnerable people, such as pregnant women and children, ahead of nurses and doctors. “We had told hospitals that if they had to choose between vaccinating patients or employees to vaccinate patients first,” Richard Daines, New York’s health commissioner, said in a statement.”
Monitoring the situation in developed countries, makes me more worried about poor ones!
Brief shocks may deliver AIDS vaccines better
Posted in NEWS on October 23, 2009| 5 Comments »
“PARIS (Reuters) (Thu Oct 22, 2009 1:55pm EDT), By Tan Ee Lyn – Brief electric shocks may help the body better respond to certain kinds of experimental AIDS vaccines, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.
They used a device that looks like a handgun to inject vaccine along with three brief electrical pulses to open up cell membranes so that the vaccine can get inside.
Sandhya Vasan of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York said the technique, called electroporation, may be particularly useful in delivering DNA vaccines, which use an infectious agent’s own genetic material to elicit an immune response.
“With a brief pulse of electricity, our cell membrane temporarily opens up and allows a lot more of the DNA to get inside. The reason why DNA vaccines by themselves don’t trigger A powerful immune response is because most of it (DNA) does not get inside our cells,” Vasan told Reuters in an interview.
(more…)
Swine flu: vaccinations are go in Europe – October 21, 2009
Posted in NEWS on October 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »