Teenagers May Be at Greater Risk of Catching Swine Flu, UN Agency Finds

[marmar]

Younger People at Greater Risk of Catching Swine Flu, WHO Says
By Jason Gale


July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Younger people are at greater risk of catching swine flu, with most cases occurring in teenagers, the World Health Organization said.

The median age of those infected with the pandemic H1N1 virus is 12 to 17 years, WHO said in a statement yesterday, citing data from Canada, Chile, Japan, U.K. and U.S. Patients requiring hospitalization and those with fatal cases may be slightly older, the Geneva-based United Nations agency said.

“As the disease expands broadly into communities, the average age of the cases is appearing to increase slightly,” WHO said. “This may reflect the situation in many countries where the earliest cases often occurred as school outbreaks but later cases were occurring in the community.”

World health officials are trying to determine which groups are most likely to get severely ill so measures to best protect them can be taken. Drugmakers are developing vaccines to fight the scourge, which WHO says may result in 2 billion infections.

Cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes and cancer put people infected with the new H1N1 virus at greater risk of developing severe complications, the UN agency said. Asthma and other forms of respiratory disease have been consistently reported as underlying conditions associated with more severe illness in several countries, it said. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601124&sid=adVINVIFs.4s

[jwirr]

1. Wasn't this the group that was most vulnerable in 1918?

[stray cat]

2. Yes - in terms of severity - good immunity may be fatal for flu like 1918

[SheilaT]

3. To be a little nit-picky,

not a good immunity but a good immune system. It's thought that a reason young adults succumbed so very swiftly to the 1918 flu was that their immune systems went into overdrive and the immune response was so strong that it killed them.

Older adults then, those over fifty, had already survived a type A flu epidemic a half century before, and so for the most part didn't get the 1918 flu. Likewise today, oldsters like me (I'm 60) may have gotten either the Hong Kong flu (1968-69) or the Asian flu (1957) and so may not get swine flu. And of course forty or fifty years from now when the next "killer" flu shows up, it will be the same demographic thing all over again.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. That Hong Kong flu was an ass-kicker, wasn't it?

Hope I don't get that sick again if I get H1N1.

[dysfunctional press]

4. this is starting to shape up like clive barker's 'the plague'...

http://www.amazon.com/Clive-Barkers-Plague-James-Beek/dp/B000GFRI5O/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1248581315&sr=8-2

and if it's even HALF as bad as the movie- look out.