Influenza infection is very common – about one in five of us are infected each year. But, surprisingly, the majority of infections don’t cause any illness. In a study published in The Lancet Respiratory…
Influenza affects up to 15% of adults and 30% of children each flu season and early indications suggest we could be facing a severe season. The 2014 seasonal influenza vaccination is available from today…
Influenza viruses rapidly evolve in shape, making it hard to develop protective vaccines against them. Despite a great deal of study, scientists have been at a loss to forecast their evolution in any detail…
Australia’s federal Department of Health has advised general practitioners to be on the lookout for potential cases of the H7N9 strain of influenza A, or bird flu, following a spate of deaths in China…
Lack of exposure to a particular influenza strain means you won’t have had a chance to build up complete immunity. And if the strain spreads easily between people and there is little immunity in communities…
Twitter has become the latest online tool to be used to monitor the spread of disease. Researchers are looking at whether health providers can identify the locale of a disease outbreak by monitoring the…
Kate Mandeville, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
When new health threats emerge, the media is often accused of hyping up the risk to the public. But we tend to believe that health experts provide rational, independent viewpoints on the real risks posed…
Adam Kucharski, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
When people talk about ‘big data’, there is an oft-quoted example: a proposed public health tool called Google Flu Trends. It has become something of a pin-up for the big data movement, but it might not…
After standing in line for the latest year’s flu jab one might wonder why all this in necessary. The answer lies in the flu virus itself and its ability to rapidly evolve and avoid the human immune system…
Nausea, vomiting, tummy pain and cramps, watery diarrhoea … We’ve all had acute gastroenteritis at some stage. As a general practitioner, my patients usually refer to their condition in more colloquial…
Facts about Flu - Perhaps the misery you feel when ill in winter isn’t the fault of the much-maligned influenza virus after all. RSV, hMPV, CoV… these may all sound like random acronyms, but they are influenza’s…
Facts about Flu - We often hear of an expected pandemic and had a scare in 2009 with the swine flu, but how well are we prepared? Although no longer considered an immediate risk, the recent outbreak of…
Facts about Flu - Ever wondered what flu classifications mean? Read on. The pandemic influenza strain, or swine flu, that spread globally in 2009 was referred to as H1N1 and the new bird flu currently…
Are you worried about how decisions involving public money are made? You should be. Last week, the National Audit Office disclosed that the Department of Health spent £424 million on the anti-flu drug…
Welcome to Facts about Flu - Our week-long series of articles about influenza. Ever wonder why the flu, coughs and colds that you suffered from in your youth have become a monster killer that rolls out…
The 2009 influenza pandemic prompted the fastest effort in history to develop a vaccine. Within six months of the pandemic declaration, vaccine-makers had developed, produced and distributed hundreds of…
When people say they have “the flu”, what they’re experiencing most of the time is the common cold, which is not caused by the influenza virus at all. But the term “flu season”, which Australia is in the…
It’s ten years since SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) upset our complacency about infectious diseases and now we are faced by another “new” disease. H7N9 bird flu is currently spreading through…