Bird, Seasonal & Swine Flu

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Granny says, "Dat's right ladies - get yer flu shot an' protect yer baby...

Study: Flu Shot While Pregnant Protects the Baby
May 03, 2016 - Getting a flu shot while pregnant appears to “significantly” reduce the risk of the baby getting influenza in its first six months, according to a new study.

Writing in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from the University of Utah School of Medicine found babies, whose mothers were vaccinated while pregnant, had a 70 percent reduction in laboratory-confirmed flu cases and an 80 percent reduction in flu-related hospitalizations. The study's lead author, Pediatrician Julie H. Shakib said, "Babies cannot be immunized during their first six months, so they must rely on others for protection from the flu during that time. When pregnant women get the flu vaccine there are clear benefits for their infants."

Getting a flu shot while pregnant protects the baby, too.​

Researchers say their findings are important because “pregnant women and young infants are among those at highest risk for dying from flu.” The researchers came to their conclusions based on data from more than 245,000 health records of pregnant women and more than 249,000 infant records covering flu seasons from December of 2005 to March 2014. The data also showed that from among the 658 babies who got the flu, 97 percent came from mothers who had not been vaccinated during pregnancy. Of those babies 151 were sick enough to require hospitalization, and 148 of those babies were born to women who had not been vaccinated.

To make sure the results were “not related to change” the researchers also examined cases of another sickness, respiratory syncytial virus, which often occurs in colder weather. They found that flu vaccinations had no effect on the number of babies getting sick with RSV. The researchers said only about 50 percent of pregnant women reported getting flu shots last flu season and that these findings reveal more expecting mothers should get vaccinated. "We just really hope more pregnant women get the vaccine," Shakib said. "That's the take-home message of the study."

Study: Flu Shot While Pregnant Protects the Baby

 

[waltky]

Granny says get yer flu vaccination ladies, so's ya'll have happy, healthy babies...

Study: Pregnant Women Pass On Flu-fighting Antibodies to Newborns
July 12, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Your muscles ache. Your nose is stuffed up. You don’t want to get out of bed. You can’t get warm. You have the flu.

Expect to be out of commission for a couple of days if you get hit with this nasty virus. Most of us can get a vaccine to lower our chances of infection, but there is one population too young to get this protective shield - newborn babies. For the first six months of their lives, babies born during flu season are at high risk of contracting the disease. Flu shots are always recommended, but doctors say they're even more important for anyone who will be in close proximity to a newborn.

Flu vaccinations for pregnant women protect their newborns, as well​

Doctors also recommend pregnant women get vaccinated to protect themselves. Pregnancy is already tough but having the flu on top of it can have serious effects, and even lead to hospitalization. Now, research shows that the benefits of flu vaccines not only protect mom, but are transferred to her baby through the placenta and protect it from flu during the vulnerable first two months of life outside the womb.

Passing on protection

Marta Nunes, a research scientist at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, focuses primarily on protecting newborns from vaccine-preventable diseases. Since the flu vaccine is not recommended for babies younger than six months, she is very interested in ways to protect them until they can receive a vaccine. “Vaccinating pregnant women is a strategy that we wanted to study, if it could work to protect these babies during the early period,” Nunes explained to VOA.

Babies of vaccinated moms are highly protected from contracting the flu during the first two months of life​

In her study, published in JAMA Pediatrics, she looked at the number of antibodies present in women who received a flu vaccine and those who received a placebo. After their babies were born, Nunes followed them for six months, comparing the number of antibodies in the mothers to those in their infants. She found that babies born to vaccinated moms were “highly protected” during the first two months, a much higher level than she had seen in a previous study.

Vaccination recommendations

 

[waltky]

Good reason for diabetics to get flu shot...

Flu vaccine may help keep diabetics out of the hospital
July 25, 2016 - People with diabetes who get the flu vaccine may be less likely to wind up hospitalized for cardiovascular or respiratory problems, a recent study suggests.

“The potential impact of influenza vaccine to reduce serious illness and death highlight the importance to renew efforts to ensure that people with diabetes receive the flu vaccine every year,” said lead study author Dr. Eszter Vamos, a public health researcher at Imperial College London. Vamos and colleagues examined seven years of data on almost 125,000 people in England with type 2 diabetes, which is associated with aging and obesity and accounts for most cases of the disease. Vaccination was associated with a 30 percent lower hospital admission rates for stroke, 22 percent lower rates for heart failure, and 15 percent lower rates for pneumonia or influenza, researchers report in CMAJ.

“Research shows that in addition to severe chest infections, flu may also lead to heart attacks and strokes,” Vamos said. “Most severe influenza complications occur in the elderly and people who suffer from long-term conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and asthma,” she added by email. To understand how flu vaccines may influence the odds of hospitalization and death for diabetics, researchers examined data on patients’ age, weight, smoking status and gender and looked at whether patients had a diagnosis or prescription for conditions for a variety of other medical conditions.

They looked at records both during the flu season and during summer months when influenza cases were less common. Patients who got the flu vaccine had 24 percent lower death rates from all causes during the study period. They also had lower rates of hospitalization for heart attack, but the difference wasn’t big enough to rule out the possibility that it was due to chance. One limitation of the study is that researchers weren’t able to assess the possibility that some people had undiagnosed diabetes, the authors note. It’s also possible that people who get vaccinated are healthier in other ways than people who skip their annual flu vaccine, the authors also point out.

Even so, the findings highlight the benefits of vaccination, said Dr. Laura Rosella, a public health researcher at the University of Toronto who wasn’t involved in the study. “It is well known that people with chronic conditions, including cardiovascular disease, are more likely to suffer complications from the flu,” Rosella said by email. “For this reason,” Rosella added, “the best protection among people with chronic conditions is preventing the flu in the first place, which can be achieved by receiving the influenza vaccine.”

Flu vaccine may help keep diabetics out of the hospital

 

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Flu pandemic threat is still with us...

WHO: Influenza Pandemic Remains Global Threat
November 17, 2016 — The World Health Organization has warned that a global influenza pandemic remains a real threat despite progress made over the past 10 years in increasing the worldwide supply of flu vaccines.

In 2006, the World Health Organization acknowledged that countries around the world were ill-prepared to tackle an influenza pandemic. At the time, there were concerns about an H5N1 bird flu pandemic spreading globally. In response, the WHO launched the Global Action Plan (GAP) for influenza vaccines with three main objectives. It aimed to increase evidence-based seasonal vaccine use; increase vaccine production as a protection against pandemics and improve regulatory capacity in developing countries; and promote research and development for better vaccines.

That initiative has now ended, but Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant-director general for health systems and innovation, observed that global preparation for an influenza pandemic had vastly improved over the past decade. "We are certainly better prepared for an influenza pandemic than we were 10 years ago," Kieny said, "but,we must not lose the momentum and we are still facing the threat of an influenza pandemic in 2016."

More vaccine production

The WHO said global production capacity for pandemic vaccines increased from an estimated 1.5 billion doses in 2006 to 6.2 billion last year. While it's an impressive achievement, Kieny said, it "still falls short of the GAP goal to immunize 70 percent of the population with two doses of vaccine, potentially for which we would need 10 billion doses." She noted that only rich countries were producing vaccines in 2006, whereas today, 14 mostly upper-middle-income countries were making strides toward manufacturing their own vaccines. In addition, she said, the number of countries that have national influenza immunization policies in place has increased from 74 to 115 today, "including lower-middle-income countries and one low-income country."

A boy gets an influenza vaccine injection at a health care clinic in Boston, Massachusetts​

William Ampofo, a professor at the University of Ghana and an advisory group member of the GAP, said he was encouraged by the progress made, but he told VOA he was disappointed that the creation of the GAP had not resulted in increased vaccine production capacity in Africa. "As part of the GAP, technology transfer was provided for developing countries, and South Africa and Egypt were part of this initiative," he said. "Unfortunately, the tech transfer has not resulted in influenza vaccine production capacity as of now."

He added, however, that the Ebola epidemic in West Africa had shown that vaccination is an effective tool against a dangerous virus and that the manufacture of a flu vaccine on the continent should be seriously considered. "Because of what happened with Ebola, now the countries — in West Africa, especially — the ministers of health are now giving attention to vaccine production capacity on the African continent," he said. "They recognize, however, that it is very difficult, but they feel that something must be started."

Flu season

 

[Muhammed]

I got two flu shots this year. My Doc recommended it. And I know damn well that I do not want to get the flu again. I caught the flu back in the early-mid 90s and I literally thought I was going to die. It was THAT bad.

 

[idb]

Don't you realise that if you vaccinate then you're pumping your body full of 'Liberal'?
Don't do it!

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - get yer flu shot

Bird Flu Virus Spreading Rapidly Across Northern Europe
November 23, 2016 - German medical experts have warned that a strain of the bird flu virus is spreading rapidly across northern Europe, most likely being carried by wild birds that do not show any symptoms.

Thomas Mettenleiter, president of Germany's animal-health-monitoring Friedrich Loeffler Institute, issued the warning on November 23. Mettenleiter said the H5N8 virus is now jumping from wild birds to domestic fowl on northern European farms. He said the virus has been detected in 10 German states since it was first registered in the country on November 8.

A worker checks laying hens kept inside a chicken farm in Rackeve, 49 kms south of Budapest, Hungary, where nearly 100,000 hens are raised in closed facilities​

Cases have also been reported in other European countries, including Denmark and Sweden -- which announced on November 23 that its first case of the disease was confirmed in a wild bird in the south of the country. Further tests were being carried out on a poultry farm in southern Sweden.

H5N8, which is not thought to be dangerous to humans, was first found on the border of Russia and Mongolia in June. Since then, it also has been found in Iran and Israel.

Bird Flu Virus Spreading Rapidly Across Northern Europe

See also:

Seoul raises bird flu alert after two more cases found
Thu, Nov 24, 2016 - South Korea yesterday raised the nation’s bird flu alert status to its second-highest level as two more outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N6 virus occurred after the first cases were confirmed last week.

The new bird flu outbreaks were discovered at two duck farms in central and southwestern regions of the nation, the South Korean Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement. All 30,500 ducks at the two farms have been culled. One more case was confirmed on Tuesday and the second earlier yesterday, the statement said.

Since the first cases of the H5N6 avian influenza were reported in the same region on Friday last week, a total of four cases have been found and three other poultry farms in other parts of the nation are being tested, the statement said. The ministry raised its bird flu alert level to “alert,” from “caution” as an increasing number of farms are reporting suspected infections in a short period of time.

More than 510,000 birds have been slaughtered to contain the spread of the virus, accounting for less than 1 percent of the nation’s total poultry population of 84.7 million, said a ministry official, who declined to be identified. Cases of human infection from the H5N6 virus have previously been reported in China and Hong Kong, with the virus killing 10 people in China since April 2014, the ministry’s data showed. The ministry has already put in place a poultry movement ban for farms within a 10km radius of where the bird flu virus had earlier been found.

The ministry said it is also considering a temporary nationwide standstill order to prevent the virus from spreading. Other bird flu cases have previously occurred in South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy, since 2014. The outbreaks lasted for more than 660 days, killing at least 13 million birds, ministry data showed. The most recent bird flu outbreak was reported in March, when the H5N8 strain was found at a duck farm.

Seoul raises bird flu alert after two more cases found - Taipei Times

 

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Susan Rice includes "pandemic flu" in the list of her biggest nightmares...

‘A Pandemic Flu, Frankly, Is a Major Concern’
January 19, 2017 | Outgoing National Security Adviser Susan Rice includes "pandemic flu" in the list of her biggest nightmares.

In a lengthy interview earlier this week, NPR’s Charlie Rose asked Rice, “What’s your biggest nightmare? What has kept you up of late?” Rice said she has “a number of worries,” and she listed them: “I think anybody in my position would worry about a catastrophic attack on the homeland or on American personnel abroad. So that's nightmare number one. And particularly if it were, God-forbid, to be combined with some form of weapon of mass destruction.” Second, Rice said she worries about the potential for Russia to “miscalculate” and provoke a conflict in Europe.

“And then there are the less probable but catastrophic scenarios,” Rice continued. “A pandemic flu, frankly, is a major concern. North Korea continuing to advance and perfect its nuclear missile program, or even an unforeseen conflict between India and Pakistan, both nuclear armed nations that are constantly skirmishing in Kashmir.” At the end of the interview, Charlie Rose returned to the topic of world instability and threats facing the United States. And Rice once again mentioned pandemic flu: “We have threats that we knew of in 2008, but they could arise at any moment like pandemic flu, which we've also discussed. That's not new, but is persistent and the risk remains.” “How serious do you see that?” Rose asked Rice.

“I think it's a real risk,” Rice said. “It's a fact. It will happen. We have seen it historically over periods of years going back -- the most grave instance was in 1918, where, you know, many, many people died. Hundreds of thousands, millions had the potential to die from something like this because now our world is that much more interconnected through trade, through commerce, through air connectivity. “And therefore, what happens in one part of the world can quickly spread to another. One of the things that this administration has done which is little known, and we did this frankly -- we started this before the Ebola epidemic, was to work with countries around the world to put in place in the weakest links, the poorest, weakest countries of the world, much improved global health infrastructure so they can detect and surveil disease, they can contain it before it spreads.

“We have called this the global health security agenda and we got 50 countries or so that are actively part of this. And that's the kind of long-term effort that we're going to need to build and sustain around the world to diminish the risk of pandemic, but we're not going to eliminate it.” Rice said most of the threat facing the U.S. “are going to require effective collective action. “That means that the United States has to lead. We have to rally other countries to work with us. They need to see it as in their interest to act whether it's to combat the Ebola epidemic where we brought the world together to do that, whether it's to confront aggression through sanctions on Russia when in Annex Crimea, or whether it is dealing with a new emergent terror threat like ISIL.”

Susan Rice: ‘A Pandemic Flu, Frankly, Is a Major Concern’

 

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Flu Virus Can Trigger A Heart Attack...

Flu Virus Can Trigger A Heart Attack
January 24, 2018 - The flu doesn't just make you feel lousy. A study published Wednesday finds it can increase your risk of having a heart attack, too.

"We found that you're six times more likely to have a heart attack during the week after being diagnosed with influenza, compared to the year before or after the infection," says study author Dr. Jeff Kwong, an epidemiologist and family physician with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario in Canada. The results appear in this week's New England Journal of Medicine.

Doctors noticed long ago that there was a connection between seasonal flu and cardiovascular deaths, but the association has been hard to nail down. Part of the challenge is that many people with flu symptoms don't get tested for the virus. So Kwong and his colleagues decided to use test results (from flu tests and other viruses, too) and match them with hospital records. "This is the first time we've had lab-confirmed influenza, so we're certain that these were influenza [viruses] causing the infection," Kwong says.

The body's under a lot of stress during a bout of flu, doctors say. Inflammation is up and oxygen levels and blood pressure can drop. These changes can lead to an increased risk of forming blood clots in the vessels that serve the heart.​

There's a lot happening in the body during the flu that can help explain the increased risk of a heart attack. "There's inflammation going on, and your body is under a lot of stress," explains Kwong. Oxygen levels and blood pressure can drop. These changes "can lead to an increased risk of forming blood clots in the vessels that serve your heart." A young person who is normally healthy is very unlikely to have a heart attack during the flu. "It's all about your baseline risk," Kwong says.

In his study, the people who had a heart attack during the flu were older adults. "Most of them were over 65, and a lot of them had risk factors for heart disease," such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes, Kwong says. The flu vaccine does not always prevent an infection from a flu virus. Some years, the shot offers more protection than others. And only about 30 percent of the study population had been vaccinated against influenza for that season. But, flu trackers say, some protection against the virus is better than none. "If we can reduce the risk of influenza infection, then we should reduce the risk of heart attacks," Kwong says. So "getting an influenza vaccine is a good idea."

MORE

 

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Flu Vaccines More Effective for Children Than for Adults...

Flu Vaccines More Effective for Children Than for Adults
March 09, 2018 - So far, 114 children in the U.S. have died from influenza or a flu-related illness, and the flu season is not yet over.

Most of those children had not been vaccinated against the virus, Dr. Anne Schuchat, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said. In her testimony Thursday before a House of Representatives subcommittee, Schuchat said that although this year’s vaccine effectiveness was relatively low — the CDC’s preliminary survey shows it is 36 percent effective overall — its effectiveness in children is much higher, at 59 percent.

When asked why, Schuchat acknowledged that infectious disease specialists don’t know, but she offered two theories. “One is, children’s immune response is often better than adults, particularly better than older adults. A second is your response to an influenza vaccine may differ when it’s the first time you’ve been exposed to influenza or the vaccine,” she said.

Flu vaccine's benefits

The CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older get a flu vaccine every year, although only about 60 percent of children in the U.S. get that vaccine. Children are more likely to get the virus and spread it, and Schuchat said having more children vaccinated is in the public interest. “We know that flu vaccines can prevent disease and reduce severity, and we know that they can also prevent spread,” she said.

Getting the flu vaccine doesn’t mean someone won’t be hospitalized or even die from the flu, but the vaccine makes it much less likely. One study found that, for healthy children, the flu vaccine reduced the risk of dying by almost two-thirds. For those children whose medical condition put them at greater risk, the vaccine cut their risk of death in half.

Peak flu has passed

Although the peak of the flu season has passed in the U.S., Schuchat said, “There’s still a lot of flu out there.” This year’s flu season started a month earlier than most, and the predominant strain, H2N2, an A strain, is more virulent than the B strains that are also circulating. Another difference from regular flu seasons is that the virus circulated through the entire continental U.S. at the same time.

The virus peaked in early February, but the season has several more weeks to go. Schuchat told the subcommittee that the B strains are more common right now than they were a few weeks ago, which may actually be good news because the CDC found that the vaccine is 42 percent effective against influenza B viruses. She told the subcommittee, “Some vaccine is better than no vaccine protection.”

Flu Vaccines More Effective for Children Than for Adults