(Press-News.org) Boys predominantly pass on flu to other boys and girls to girls, according to a new study of how swine flu spread in a primary school during the 2009 pandemic, published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The results also suggest that flu transmission is most intensive between children of the same class, but that sitting next to an infected person does not significantly increase a child's risk of catching flu. The data will help researchers to model how epidemics spread and how interventions such as school closures can help contain an outbreak.
In the study, researchers from Imperial College London, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health analysed how social networks influenced the spread of H1N1 pandemic flu in an elementary school in Pennsylvania.
The results show that children are about three times more likely to transmit flu to children of the same gender than to children of the opposite gender. The researchers also found that the transmission rate is about five times higher between classmates than between children in a different class in the same grade, and about 25 times higher than between children in different grades. However, sitting next a child with flu does not significantly raise a child's risk of catching it.
The study involved 370 pupils (81 per cent of children in the school) from 295 households. The researchers collected extensive data from seating charts, school timetables, bus schedules, nurse logs, attendance records and questionnaires. Although it is impossible to determine exactly who caught flu from whom, the researchers used sophisticated statistical methods to probabilistically reconstruct the pattern of spread and estimate the rates of transmission in different settings.
"Mathematical models are useful for predicting how outbreaks will spread, but in order to make the models accurate, we need to supply them with data about how disease spreads in the real world," said Dr Simon Cauchemez, the lead author of the study from the Medical Research Council Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial College London. "This is one of the most comprehensive studies to date on how a flu epidemic spreads between children in school, and it tells us a great deal about how social networks influence transmission.
"The data from this study will help us make more accurate models, which can help public health officials to handle epidemics effectively. For example, these new models could help us better understand whether and when it would be appropriate to close a school, or whether it might be better to close individual classes or grades."
The school that was studied in this project closed 18 days after the outbreak began, when 27 per cent of pupils had already shown symptoms. According to the analysis, transmission rates were falling at this stage, and closing the school probably had little impact on the spread of the epidemic.
Dr David Swerdlow, Senior Advisor for Epidemiology and Emergency Response, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, at the CDC, said: "This was a unique opportunity at the inception of the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic to learn about transmission in social networks. The investigation demonstrates the benefits of partnerships as the collaboration included Imperial College London, the Pennsylvania Department of Heath, and CDC."
INFORMATION:
The study was funded by the Medical Research Council, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the NIGMS MIDAS initiative, the EU FP7 FluModCont project, Research Councils UK, Pennsylvania Department of Health, and the CDC.
END
New Haven, Conn.—Triceratops and Torosaurus have long been considered the kings of the horned dinosaurs. But a new discovery traces the giants' family tree further back in time, when a newly discovered species appears to have reigned long before its more well-known descendants, making it the earliest known member of its family.
The new species, called Titanoceratops after the Greek myth of the Titans, rivaled Triceratops in size, with an estimated weight of nearly 15,000 pounds and a massive eight-foot-long skull.
Titanoceratops, which lived in the American southwest ...
Scientists have discovered why orchids are one of the most successful groups of flowering plants - it is all down to their relationships with the bees that pollinate them and the fungi that nourish them. The study, published tomorrow in the American Naturalist, is the culmination of a ten-year research project in South Africa involving researchers from Imperial College London, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and other international institutions.
The orchid family is one of the largest groups of flowering plants, with over 22,000 species worldwide. Today's research suggests ...
Using funding provided under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory has launched a demonstration project near one of the Savannah River Site's former production reactor sites to clean up chemically contaminated groundwater, naturally.
A portion of the subsurface at the Site's P Area has become contaminated with chlorinated volatile organic compounds that are essentially like dry-cleaning fluid. SRNL and Clemson University have patented a consortium of microbes that have an appetite for that kind ...
INDIANAPOLIS – A School of Science at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis biophysicist has developed a new method to identify communication pathways connecting distant regions within proteins.
With this tool, Andrew J. Rader, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics, has identified a mechanism for cooperative behavior within an entire molecule, a finding that suggests that in the future it may be possible to design drugs that target anywhere along the length of a molecule's communication pathway rather than only in a single location as they do today. The discovery ...
CORVALLIS, Ore. – Genetic research is showing that healthy steelhead runs in Pacific Northwest streams can depend heavily on the productivity of their stay-at-home counterparts, rainbow trout.
Steelhead and rainbow trout look different, grow differently, and one heads off to sea while the other never leaves home. But the life histories and reproductive health of wild trout and steelhead are tightly linked and interdependent, more so than has been appreciated, a new Oregon State University study concludes.
The research could raise new challenges for fishery managers ...
Numerous nanomaterials are currently at the focus of public attention. In particular silver nanoparticles are being investigated in detail, both by scientists as well as by the regulatory authorities. The assumption behind this interest is that they are dealing with a completely new substance. However, Empa researchers Bernd Nowack and Harald Krug, together with Murray Heights of the company HeiQ have shown in a paper recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology that nanosilver is by no means the discovery of the 21st century. Silver particles with ...
Offering the morning after pill free over the counter has not reduced the number of teenage pregnancies and may be associated with a rise in sexually-transmitted diseases (STIs), according to a report by experts at The University of Nottingham.
Professors David Paton and Sourafel Girma used local health authority data to study the impact that the introduction of Government-backed schemes to offer emergency birth control at pharmacies and without prescription have had on conception rates and the diagnosis of STIs among under-18s.
Their findings show that, on average, ...
Geneva, 31 January 2011. CERN today announced that the LHC will run through to the end of 2012 with a short technical stop at the end of 2011. The beam energy for 2011 will be 3.5 TeV. This decision, taken by CERN management following the annual planning workshop held in Chamonix last week and a report delivered today by the laboratory's machine advisory committee, gives the LHC's experiments a good chance of finding new physics in the next two years, before the LHC goes into a long shutdown to prepare for higher energy running starting 2014.
"If LHC continues to improve ...
Chestnut Hill, Mass. (1/31/2011) – Red Bull's red and gold logo can "give you wings" – for better or worse – even if consumers don't know it, according to a new study by two Boston College professors, who found the brand's edgy marketing efforts have sold a heavy dose of attitude to consumers.
Researchers put subjects at the controls of a car racing video game, supplying each with functionally identical racecars, but each car decorated with a different brand logo and color scheme.
Players put in control of the Red Bull car displayed the characteristics often attributed ...
The more we learn about biology, the closer we get to being able to treat disease – and the more complicated our understanding of disease itself becomes.
A new research finding showing a strong relationship between complex microbial ecologies in human intestines and the common but serious medical condition known as fatty liver illustrates this paradox.
From past genomic studies, we have learned that a mind-boggling multitude of different kinds of benign bacteria inhabit our intestines and that these populations can vary almost infinitely from one human being to the ...