Therapy Analysis - Influenza
A persistent threat
Nobel laureate Joshua Lederberg once commented that "the single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on the planet is the virus". Throughout recent history, few viruses have had such a global impact as influenza. The 20th century alone saw several major pandemic outbreaks, each with significant death tolls. Perhaps most worryingly, recent years have seen a resurgence of more virulent strains of influenza, once again highlighting the threat posed by this virus.
Influenza, more commonly known as the 'flu, is an infectious respiratory disease caused by single-stranded RNA viruses belonging to the Orthomyxoviridae family. Typically transmitted through saliva and nasal secretions by coughing and sneezing, influenza viruses cause a variety of symptoms including headache, cough, fever, sore throat, myalgia and general malaise. The typical epidemiological pattern of influenza is of seasonal epidemics. In this, its commonest form, influenza has consistently been, and remains, the scourge of the winter months. It invariably results in hundreds of thousands of 'flu-related deaths in vulnerable populations, and remains a persistent problem for health authorities throughout the world.
Occasionally, an outbreak of influenza can be widespread and infectious enough to become a pandemic. Perhaps the most famous and deadly incidence of this was the Spanish 'flu pandemic of 1918-1919, which had an estimated death toll of between 50 and 100 million people worldwide. In contrast to seasonal 'flu outbreaks that are typically more likely to prove fatal to the elderly, juvenile and immunocompromised, a large proportion of the fatalities in 1918-19 were amongst healthy young adults. In this instance, the virus often caused a severe immune reaction that was more pronounced in young adults with active immune systems.
