Studies Needed to Address Public Health Challenges of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic: Insights from Modeling

[tetano]

Plos Medicine

Studies Needed to Address Public Health Challenges of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic: Insights from Modeling

In light of the 2009 influenza pandemic and potential future pandemics, Maria Van Kerkhove and colleagues anticipate six public health challenges and the data needed to support sound public health decision making.

Citation: Van Kerkhove MD, Asikainen T, Becker NG, Bjorge S, Desenclos J-C, et al. (2010) Studies Needed to Address Public Health Challenges of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic: Insights from Modeling. PLoS Med 7(6): e1000275. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1000275


Maria D. Van Kerkhove1*, Tommi Asikainen2, Niels G. Becker3, Steven Bjorge4, Jean-Claude Desenclos5, Thais dos Santos4, Christophe Fraser1, Gabriel M. Leung6, Marc Lipsitch7, Ira M. Longini, Jr8,9, Emma S. McBryde10, Cathy E. Roth4, David K. Shay11, Derek J. Smith12,13,14, Jacco Wallinga15,16, Peter J. White1,17, Neil M. Ferguson1, Steven Riley18, for the WHO Informal Network for Mathematical Modelling for Pandemic Influenza H1N1 2009 (Working Group on Data Needs)


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As the global epidemiology of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza (H1N1pdm) virus strain unfolds into 2010, substantial policy challenges will continue to present themselves for the next 12 to 18 months.
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Here, we anticipate six public health challenges and identify data that are required for public health decision making: Measuring age-specific immunity to infection; accurately quantifying severity; improving treatment outcomes for severe cases; quantifying the effectiveness of interventions; capturing the full impact of the pandemic on mortality; and rapidly identifying and responding to antigenic variants.
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Representative serological surveys stand out as a critical source of data with which to reduce uncertainty around policy choices for both pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical interventions after the initial wave has passed.
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Continuing to monitor the time course of incidence of severe H1N1pdm cases will give a clear picture of variability in underlying transmissibility of the virus during population-wide changes in behavior such as school vacations and other nonpharmaceutical interventions.


Full article:

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000275

 

[Shiloh]

Re: Studies Needed to Address Public Health Challenges of the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic: Insights from Modeling

Source: http://www.eht-forum.org/news.html?fileId=news100603061406&from=home&id=0

Thursday 03 June 2010
Modellers call for flu antibody data
Clues on immunity from blood tests needed to guide pandemic flu response, says expert group


The lack of precise immunological evidence about how the H1N1 influenza virus circulates in the population hindered the public health response to the 2009 pandemic, says a group of infectious disease and public health specialists. The group were convened informally by the World Health Organization and met in July 2009 to discuss how mathematical modelling could inform the pandemic response. The results of their meeting are published online this week in PLoS Medicine.

In the paper the group, led by Maria Van Kerkhove from Imperial College London, UK, flag scientific data that they believe will help public health policy makers to overcome the challenges they may face in dealing not only with future events, but also with the tail-end of the current pandemic over the next 18 months.

Their recommendations focus on the need for serological testing of blood collected from people during the pandemic, which indicates levels of circulating antibodies against the flu virus and can give insights into the immunity of people and populations. Serological surveys are a ?critical source of data?, they explain. But data of this type are not collected routinely.

Epidemiologists, infectious disease modellers and public health officials are currently relying on serological data collected in the 1980s, say the authors. Nathaniel Hupert, of the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, notes that little new information has been published since then...