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Lower respiratory tract infections, including pneumonia and influenza (P&I), are the leading cause of infectious disease-related death worldwide (1). Annually, up to 95,000 persons might die from P&I in the [...]

This essay, and the following three articles, are offered in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. Eds. On 28 June 1914, in the [...]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ahj.2010.03.035 Byline: Tamara A. Winkel (a), Olaf Schouten (b), Sanne E. Hoeks (a), Willem-Jan Flu (a), Dave Hampton (c), Paulus Kirchhof (d), Jan-Peter van Kuijk (a), Jan Lindemans (e), Hence J.M. Verhagen (a), Jeroen J. Bax (f), Don Poldermans (a) Abstract: The pathophysiology of new-onset cardiac arrhythmias is complex and may bring about severe cardiovascular complications. The relevance of perioperative arrhythmias during vascular surgery has not been investigated. The aim of this study was to assess risk factors and prognosis of new-onset arrhythmias during vascular surgery. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Vascular Surgery, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (b) Department of Surgery, Reinier de Graaf Hospital, Delft, The Netherlands (c) Stone Bridge Biomedical, Maastricht, The Netherlands (d) Department of Cardiology and Angiology, Hospital of the University of Munster and German Atrial Fibrillation competence NETwork (AFNET), Munster, Germany (e) Department of Clinical Chemistry, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (f) Department of Cardiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands Article History: Received 1 December 2009; Accepted 31 March 2010

We propose a mathematically straightforward method to infer the incidence curve of an epidemic from a recorded daily death curve and time-to-death distribution; the method is based on the Richardson--Lucy deconvolution scheme from optics. We apply the method to reconstruct the incidence curves for the 1918 influenza epidemic in Philadelphia and New York State. The incidence curves are then used to estimate epidemiological quantities, such as daily reproductive numbers and infectivity ratios. We found that during a brief period before the official control measures were implemented in Philadelphia, the drop in the daily number of new infections due to an average infector was much larger than expected from the depletion of susceptibles during that period; this finding was subjected to extensive sensitivity analysis. Combining this with recorded evidence about public behavior, we conclude that public awareness and change in behavior is likely to have had a major role in the slowdown of the epidemic even in a city whose response to the 1918 influenza epidemic is considered to have been among the worst in the U.S. 1918 pandemic | incidence curve | death curve | Richardson--Lucy deconvolution | infectivity ratios doi/10.1073/pnas.0902958106

Influenza B virus causes a significant amount of morbidity and mortality, yet the systems to produce high yield inactivated vaccines for these viruses have lagged behind the development of those for influenza A virus. We have established a plasmid-only reverse genetics system for the generation of recombinant influenza B virus that facilitates the generation of vaccine viruses without the need for time consuming coinfection and selection procedures currently required to produce reassortants. We cloned the eight viral cDNAs of influenza B/Yamanashi/166/98, which yields relatively high titers in embryonated chicken eggs, between RNA polymerase I and RNA polymerase II transcription units. Virus was detected as early as 3 days after transfection of cocultured COS7 and Madin-Darby canine kidney cells and achieved levels of [10.sup.6]-[10.sup.7] plaque-forming units per ml of cell supernatant 6 days after transfection. The full-length sequence of the recombinant virus after passage into embryonated chicken eggs was identical to that of the input plasmids. To improve the utility of the eight-plasmid system for generating 6 + 2 reassortants from recently circulating influenza B strains, we optimized the reverse transcriptase--PCR for cloning of the hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA) segments. The six internal genes of B/Yamanashi/166/98 were used as the backbone to generate 6 + 2 reassortants including the HA and NA gene segments from B/Victoria/504/2000, B/Hong Kong/ 330/2001, and B/Hawaii/10/2001. Our results demonstrate that the eight-plasmid system can be used for the generation of high yields of influenza B virus vaccines expressing current HA and NA glycoproteins from either of the two lineages of influenza B virus.

Vaccination of all children against influenza can also lower the mortality rate from influenza among the elderly. This was shown in Japan, when mortality rates from influenza among the elderly dropped after mandatory childhood vaccination laws were passed in 1977.