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five (1 votes)1 (1 votes)

Following a recent improve within the level of seasonal influenza which includes H1N1 (2009) and influenza B circulating in the UK, the Department of Well being has issued guidance on the use of antiviral drugs for the management of those influenza patients in England who’re at greater risk of developing complications from flu.

Dr John Watson, a flu expert in the HPA, stated: “Over the last few weeks we have seen a rise within the number of instances of flu in the community. We have also received reports of patients with serious illness requiring hospitalisation and outbreaks of flu in schools across the country.

“For most people, seasonal flu is not life threatening and usually lasts seven to ten days. However, it may be far more dangerous for those in at-risk groups, like the elderly, pregnant women and patients with heart problems, diabetes or lung, liver or renal diseases, or those who have weak immune systems who are at risk of developing complications.”

“Flu vaccination offers the best protection for those at high risk from seasonal influenza. If you are in an at risk group and you haven’t had your jab, we recommend you make an appointment with your GP or medical practitioner now.”The flu H1N1 (2009) virus, formerly known as ‘swine flu’, is now 1 of the group of seasonal flu viruses circulating around the world. Following a pandemic, it really is often the case that the pandemic strain becomes the most common seasonal strain of influenza the next flu season, so it in not surprising to see H1N1 (2009) circulating this winter.This year’s seasonal flu vaccine includes a H1N1 2009 component so that people who are vulnerable are protected against all the circulating strains. For the first time the seasonal vaccine is being offered to pregnant ladies as they had been disproportionally affected by the H1N1 (2009) strain throughout the pandemic and are far more at risk of serious complications.

Symptoms of seasonal flu include sudden onset of fever, cough as well as sore throat, aching muscles and joints. The best advice for treating flu in healthy folks within the population is to rest, drink plenty of fluids and take pain relievers for example paracetamol.

Maintaining good cough and hand hygiene, including covering your nose and mouth with a tissue when you cough and sneeze, disposing of the tissue as soon as feasible and cleaning your hands as soon you can are important actions that can support prevent the spread of germs and reduce the risk of transmission.

Dr John Watson added: “Although unpleasant, flu is a self-limiting illness and if you have flu it truly is best to stay at residence until properly. If individuals in at risk groups develop symptoms consistent with flu or if anybody whose symptoms persist or become far more severe then we advise they seek medical advice.”

Notes

1. Antivirals are drugs given to high risk patients who become ill with seasonal influenza. They are most effective if taken inside 48 hours of onset and could assist limit the impact of some symptoms and reduce the possible for serious complications. They are also used in some situations where it truly is critical to assist prevent men and women from getting influenza. The NICE guidance applies only when the number of folks with flu reaches a high-enough level and there is good evidence that flu is ‘circulating in the community’.

2. The Department of Wellness has now advised GPs to consider prescribing antiviral drugs where necessary in line with guidance issued from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence (NICE). To see the current guidance please go here which has full guidance on the use of antivirals including oseltamivir. It does not recommend antivirals for the prevention of flu in otherwise healthy individuals below 65, even if they have already been in close get in touch with with someone with a flu-like illness.3. If you are suffering from flu you can get advice from NHS Direct on http://www.nhs.uk or pay a visit to your GP. For further information on flu go here.

4. Seasonal flu vaccine is recommended for those aged 65 or over and those with the following conditions, regardless of age: chronic respiratory disease, heart illness, renal disease and chronic liver illness, diabetes requiring insulin or oral hypoglycaemic drugs, immunosuppression. Vaccination is also recommended for pregnant ladies and those living in long-stay residential care homes or other long stay care facilities where rapid spread is likely to follow introduction of infection and cause high morbidity and mortality (this does not include prisons, young offenders’ institutions, or university halls of residence). Vaccination is also recommended for carer’s defined as those who’re in receipt of a carer’s allowance, or those who are the main carer for an elderly or disabled person whose welfare may be at risk if the carer falls ill. This should be given on an individual basis at the GP’s discretion in the context of other clinical risk groups in their practice. In addition, it really is recommended that immunisation be offered to all well being care workers involved within the delivery of care and/or assistance to patients. Social service employers have also been asked to think about offering immunisation to all staff involved within the delivery of care and/or support to clients. The vaccine programme takes place in between October – December but high risk individuals may still be able to obtain vaccine from their GP.

Source:
Haelth Protection Agency

The number of men and women with asthma has increased sharply over the past few decades. It has been suggested that this is a result of decreased childhood exposure to microorganisms. A team of researchers – led by Dale Umetsu, at Harvard Medical School, Boston; Michio Shimamura, in the University of Tsukuba, Japan; and Petr Illarionov, in the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom – has now provided concrete evidence in mice to assistance this idea and identified an underlying mechanism to explain this protection, which the team hope could be exploited to develop ways to prevent asthma.

In the study, infection of suckling mice with influenza A virus protected the mice as adults in a model of asthma. Protection was related with the expansion of a subset of immune cells known as NKT cells. Importantly, NKT cell-mediated protection in the model of asthma studied could also be induced by treating suckling mice with a molecule derived from the bacterium Helicobacter pylori. The authors therefore suggest that treating youngsters with therapeutics that activate the NKT cell population might prevent the development of asthma.

TITLE: Influenza infection in suckling mice expands an NKT cell subset that protects against airway hyperreactivity

Source:
Karen Honey
Journal of Clinical Investigation

It’s colds and flu season, and as any parent knows, colds and flu spread like wildfire, especially by means of schools.

New study using human-networking theory may possibly give a clearer picture of just how, exactly, infectious diseases for example the common cold, influenza, whooping cough and SARS can spread by means of a closed group of men and women, and even via populations at significant.

With the support of 788 volunteers at a high school, Marcel Salath??, a biologist at Penn State University, developed a new technique to count the number of possible disease-spreading events that occur in a typical day.

This outcomes are published in this week’s issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The investigation was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“Contact networks, which are shaped by social and cultural processes, are keys to the spread of information and infection,” says Deborah Winslow, NSF program director for cultural anthropology and the ecology of infectious diseases. “Before this research, the study of contact networks had been hampered by the lack of good information on their formation and structure.”

“This setting proved a closed population in which the entire network could be determined. By collecting real-time network data, the researchers improved significantly on the usual error-prone techniques that depend on asking informants to recall their interactions.”

Every day folks come into get in touch with with many other people; their interactions vary in length; and each get in touch with is an opportunity for a illness to spread, Salath?? stated.

“But it’s not like you can take a poll and ask people, ‘How several various folks have breathed on you today, and for how long?’ We knew we had to figure out the number of person-to-person contacts systematically.”

Using a population of high-school students, teachers and staff members as a model for a closed group of folks, Salath?? and his team created a strategy to count how many times doable disease-spreading interactions occurred during a typical day.

Volunteers had been asked to spend one school day wearing matchbox-sized sensor devices–called motes–on lanyards about their necks.

Like a cell phone, each and every mote was equipped with its own unique tracking number, and every mote was programmed to send and receive radio signals at 20-second intervals to record the presence of other nearby motes.

Volunteers then were asked to go about their day by attending classes, walking by way of the halls, and chatting with other folks.

At the end of the day, Salath??’s team collected the motes and recorded how several mote-to-mote interactions had occurred, and how long each interaction had lasted.

“An interaction isn’t necessarily a conversation,” Salath?? stated.

“Even when folks aren’t talking, they could be sneezing and coughing in every single other’s direction, bumping into every other, and passing about pathogens.”

To record even these non-conversational events–any kind of spatial closeness that would be enough to spread a contagious disease–each mote used a 3-meter maximum signaling range, extending outward from the front of the person’s body.

Defining a single interaction as any 20-second or longer event of mote-to-mote proximity, Salath?? and his team discovered that the total number of close-proximity events was 762,868.

“The identical two men and women could have had numerous extremely brief interactions,” Salath?? said. “Still, we have to count each brief interaction individually, even among the same two people.”

“From a pathogen’s point of view, every interaction is another chance to jump from person to person.”

In addition, the team located peaks of interactions at times between classes, not surprisingly, when mote-wearing volunteers were physically closer to one another, moving about in the halls on their way towards the next class.

Salath?? and his team found that, at the end of the day, most folks had experienced a fairly high number of person-to-person interactions, but they also located very little variation among individuals.

Strikingly, they did not find any individuals who had an extraordinarily high number of contacts when compared with the rest of the group. Such individuals–called super-spreaders–are known to be very essential in the dynamics of illness spread.

“For example, in sexual-contact networks, one often finds a group of men and women with a much greater prospective to contract and spread a virus like HIV,” Salath?? said.

“This possible is due to these individuals’ extremely high number of interactions. But in our experiment, although there might have already been kids with a few much more interaction events, for the most component, everyone had concerning the very same high level of interaction.”

Salath?? explained that although schools may indeed be “hot beds” for colds as well as the flu, individual students do not seem to vary with regard to exposure risk on account of their get in touch with patterns.

Data from the motes also confirmed an essential social-networking theory–that contact events are not random because a lot of “closed triangles” exist inside a community.

“If person A has contact with person B, and person B has get in touch with with person C, chances are that persons A and C also have get in touch with with each and every other,” Salath?? said.

“Real data illustrating these triangles provide just 1 far more piece of information to help us track how a disease actually spreads.”

Salath?? also said that networking information for example his could aid guide public-health initiatives for example vaccination strategies and prevention education.

Co-authors of the paper are: Maria Kazandjieva, Jung Woo Lee, Philip Levis, Marcus Feldman and James Jones, all of Stanford University.

Source:
Cheryl Dybas
National Science Foundation

two.5 (two votes)

A three-year study by Yale School of Medicine researchers has discovered that vaccinating pregnant females against influenza is more than 90 percent effective in preventing their infants from being hospitalized with influenza within the initial six months of life. Published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, the study builds on preliminary data the research team presented last year in the Infectious Illness Society of America in Philadelphia.

Influenza is a key cause of serious respiratory disease in pregnant ladies and of hospitalization in infants. Although the flu vaccine is recommended for all pregnant females and young children, no vaccine is approved for infants under six months of age. Preventive strategies for this age group include general infection control and vaccination of those coming in close contact with them.

First author Isaac Benowitz, a Yale medical student, senior author Marietta Vazquez, M.D., and their colleagues examined the effectiveness of flu vaccine in the course of pregnancy in preventing hospitalization in infants. The study enrolled infants hospitalized at Yale-New Haven Hospital because of influenza and a similar group of infants with out influenza. The researchers then compared whether each and every infant’s mother had gotten the flu vaccine in the course of pregnancy.

“When we compared vaccination rates throughout pregnancy within the study, we discovered that inside the group of infants who didn’t have influenza, far much more mothers received the influenza vaccine,” stated Vazquez, assistant professor inside the Department of Pediatrics at Yale. “In the group of infants studied, giving the vaccine to a woman through pregnancy was 91.five percent effective in preventing hospitalization on account of influenza.”

Vazquez said that the study’s findings provide an effective strategy for protecting infants below six months old, for whom no vaccine is obtainable. She also points out that vaccination through pregnancy is cost-effective, as 1 vaccine protects two individuals.

Notes:

Other Yale authors on the study include Daina B. Esposito, Kristina D. Gracey and Eugene D. Shapiro, M.D.

Citation: Clinical Infectious Diseases 2010, 51 (12) (December 15, 2010)

Source:
Karen Peart
Yale University

With reports of an enhance in H1N1 situations emerging in Scotland, doctors urged patients who’re eligible for the winter flu vaccination to get in touch with their GP practice.

The vaccine programme continues all through the winter months for those individuals most at risk from the flu bug.

By having the vaccination, patients aged over 65 and those under 65 ‘at risk’ can protect themselves from the effects of flu, and in doing so, reduce winter pressure on Scotland’s busy hospitals. Those ‘at risk’ include people with a chronic heart or chest complaint such as asthma or diabetes.The H1N1 virus (swine flu) will likely be one of the main strains of seasonal flu this winter, and we are already seeing reports of increasing numbers of situations. This year’s vaccination includes protection against the H1N1 strain of flu. Also, this year, it’s recommended that pregnant ladies not in the high-risk groups who have not previously been vaccinated against H1N1 flu have the seasonal flu jab.

Dr Dean Marshall, Chairman of the BMA’s Scottish Common Practitioners Committee, said:

“For most of us, flu makes us really feel miserable, but doesn’t actually pose any serious risks to our health. Unfortunately, for the more vulnerable, it can cause serious complications and even lead to death. It truly is crucial that the flu campaign reaches as many vulnerable and ‘at-risk’ individuals as achievable because it really is inevitable that there will probably be more situations of flu this winter. The vaccination, however, can reduce both the likelihood of getting flu along with the severity of the illness of those unfortunate enough to catch it.

“GPs are prepared for this winter’s battle against the flu bug. Across the country, surgeries have put in place the systems needed to reach and protect as a lot of older and at risk Scots as feasible.

“Flu could be quite serious for those at risk, so take up your GP’s offer of a vaccination and be protected this winter.”

Notes

‘At risk’ groups include those suffering from a chronic heart or chest complaints, such as asthma, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, lowered immunity as a result of disease or steroid medication or cancer remedy, individuals in places such as nursing homes where flu could spread quickly, and others with a serious medical condition.

Source:
British Medical Association, Scotland

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Dr Mike Thomas, GP and Chief Medical Adviser to Asthma UK, says: ‘Swine flu, and indeed seasonal flu, can sadly be fatal. The most recent deaths, as reported by the Health Protection Agency, highlight the need for folks to be aware of how serious flu may be, especially for those with existing lung and respiratory conditions like asthma.

‘We urge individuals with asthma to have the swine flu vaccine. Although swine flu is mild in most instances, men and women with asthma are at risk of serious breathing complications for example pneumonia if they do develop the illness.

‘If you have asthma, it’s also vital to take other precautions so that your condition is well-controlled, particularly through the colder weather forecast up until Christmas. This includes using your preventer inhaler as prescribed if you have 1, attending your annual asthma review and getting a personal asthma action plan, which gives you information on what to do if your asthma gets worse and what to do in an emergency.

‘It is also worth becoming mindful that swine flu is spread by droplets from talking, coughing or sneezing and contact with those droplets on surfaces, so ensure you cough or sneeze into a tissue, which can then be disposed of safely, and ensure you wash your hands thoroughly.’

‘For further advice, speak to your doctor or asthma nurse. Asthma UK has further information about both seasonal and swine flu, which may be accessed via the Asthma UK website.

Source:
Asthma UK

four (1 votes)

Carrageenan, is a polymer derived from red seaweed which helps to create a protective physical barrier within the nasal cavity and has proven to be an effective antiviral within the therapy of the common cold. The present study assessed the efficacy of Carrageenan against influenza viruses, including the pandemic H1N1 influenza strain. Results showed that the polymer directly binds to influenza viruses, effectively blocking the virus from attaching to cells and spreading further. In animal experiments, Carrageenan demonstrated equivalent efficacy when compared towards the drug Tamiflu.

“Influenza viruses still represent a substantial threat to public health on a global scale and with increasing viral resistance to Tamiflu, the require for alternatives has never been greater,” commented Dr. Andreas Grassauer, CEO and co-founder of Marinomed. “This study confirms that iota-carrageenan may be used as an alternative to neuraminidase inhibitors and should be further tested for prevention and treatment of influenza A in clinical trials in humans.”

Sources: Veterin????rmedizinische Universit????t Wien, AlphaGalileo Foundation.

View drug information on Tamiflu capsule.

four (1 votes)1 (1 votes)

As seasonal flu tightens its grip in communities across the country, public well being officials are reminding everyone to routinely and properly wash their hands, that is one of the simplest, most critical and effective defenses against the spread of germs and illness.

Based on the Food and Drug Administration, proper hand-washing can prevent up to half of all foodborne illnesses. And kids who wash their hands at the least four times a day experience 24 percent fewer sick days from colds, the flu and similar illnesses, and 51 percent fewer sick days on account of stomach ailments.

To encourage healthy habits and keep families safe this winter, the American Public Health Association’s Get Ready campaign is launching a new initiative nowadays aimed at promoting proper hand-washing. All through the next few weeks, APHA is going to be providing hand-washing timers that when activated play a 20-second tune reminding everyone how long it takes to thoroughly wash your hands. For a limited time, the no-cost timers and other critical hand-washing supplies is going to be accessible on the Get Ready website.

“With flu season here along with the spread of germs and illness becoming a greater threat, proper hand-washing is one of the most important and simplest steps adults and children can take to protect their wellness,” stated Georges C. Benjamin, MD, FACP, FACEP, (E), executive director of APHA. “The Get Ready hand-washing timers are created to teach men and women that it’s not only important to wash your hands but to follow the right techniques in doing so.”

Other Get Ready hand-washing tips include:

- wet your hands using warm water;
- rub your hands vigorously together and scrub all skin surfaces;
- be sure to rinse all the soap off your hands; and
- when no soap and water is obtainable, hand sanitizers might be an effective substitute until you can reach a sink.

This effort is in collaboration using the National Association of Child Care Professionals and sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive Inc.

Source:
American Public Health Association

A head to head trial of the two H1N1 vaccines given to adults during the 2009 pandemic finds that the adjuvanted split-virus vaccine achieved a a lot more rapid and stronger immune response than the whole-virus vaccine. Furthermore, the findings published On the web Initial in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, suggest that a single dose of the adjuvanted vaccine should be sufficient in adults and adolescents, but for older folks two doses might be required.

The study may be the 1st to directly compare two of the commercially obtainable H1N1 vaccines in adults, and concurs using the UK Department of Wellness decision to use the adjuvanted vaccine as the primary vaccine during the recent pandemic.

Effective vaccines are needed to minimise the effects of pandemic influenza. However, few studies have been done to directly compare H1N1 vaccines to guide future vaccine strategies. Two influenza A 2009 H1N1 vaccines were purchased by the UK Government for the national immunisation programme-a non-adjuvanted whole-virus vaccine and an adjuvanted split-virus inactivated vaccine*.

In this study, a team of UK researchers led by Karl Nicholson from the University of Leicester compared the safety and immune response generated by these two vaccines against influenza A H1N1 during the second wave of the 2009 pandemic.

Between October 2009 and November 2009, 347 healthy adults had been enrolled from 3 hospitals in the UK. Participants were grouped by age (18-44 years, 45-64 years, and 65 years and older) and randomly assigned to two doses of either the adjuvanted-virus vaccine or the whole-virus vaccine, 21 days apart. Blood samples were taken before vaccination and at weekly intervals after each dose to measure alterations in antibody levels.

The adjuvanted vaccine induced a significantly higher immune response and achieved higher seroconversion rates (rises in antibody levels) than the whole-virus vaccine in all age groups, and this seroprotective effect persisted as much as 6 months following vaccination.

The adjuvanted vaccine also achieved far more rapid seroconversion than the whole-virus vaccine. Immune responses were strongest in young adults with 75% of all 18-44 year olds achieving seroprotection within 1 week of the very first dose.

Both vaccines were nicely tolerated with no vaccine-related serious side effects. However, the adjuvanted vaccine produced a lot more injection-site symptoms and common symptoms (muscle pain, chills, headaches, and malaise) than the whole-virus vaccine.

The authors say: “Despite having half the antigen content of the whole-virion vaccine, the ASO3A adjuvanted split-virion vaccine was far more immunogenic than the whole-virion vaccine in all-age groups. The adjuvanted vaccine induced early seroprotection in three-quarters of young adults and a lot more than half of adults of all ages inside 1 week of the first dose. This rapid protection could be crucially crucial in populations such as at-risk groups, or when giving the vaccine coincides with escalating illness activity.”

They conclude: “With limited vaccine production capacity, dose-sparing squalene-containing adjuvanted vaccine can optimise coverage.”

In a Comment, Geert Leroux-Roels and Isabel Leroux-Roels from Ghent University Hospital, Ghent, Belgium, say: “The ultimate question that remains is whether greater antibody responses as recorded in the study by Nicholson and colleagues translate into superior protection. Comparison of vaccine effectiveness information in countries where different H1N1 pandemic vaccines have already been used side by side in comparable populations will hopefully shed some light on this crucial issue.”

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Source: The Lancet Infectious Diseases

four (1 votes)

The Globe Well being Organization set a target for the influenza vaccination rate for 2006 of far more than 50% of the elderly population and an enhance to much more than 75% by 2010. These rates have thus far not been achieved in the old German states. Within the current concern of Deutsches Arzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2010; 107[48]: 845-50) the working group around Annicka M. Reuss presents rates from flu seasons past.

Germany’s Standing Vaccination Committee (STIKO) recommends annual vaccinations against seasonal influenza. The risk groups for the infection, which usually peaks in January and February, include those older than 60 years of age. Compared with other European countries, Germany has the lowest vaccination rate for these persons. All vaccinations reimbursed by the statutory wellness insurers are captured by the associations of wellness insurance physicians (KV) and passed on towards the Robert Koch Institute as component of the KV sentinel project. Reuss et al. extracted from this information pool the influenza vaccination rates from areas covered by 14 associations of statutory wellness insurance physicians for the influenza seasons 2004/05, 2005/06, and 2006/07. Their analysis showed that vaccination rates for seasonal influenza in these years had been 45-50% and therefore did not meet the criteria set out by the Globe Wellness Organization. The scenario in individual German states was heterogeneous; the east German states had greater results.

Sources: Deutsches Aerzteblatt International, AlphaGalileo Foundation.