The 1918 influenza pandemic hastened the decline of tuberculosis in the United States: An age, period, cohort analysis

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Vaccine
Volume 29, Supplement 2, 22 July 2011, Pages B38-B41
Historical Influenza Pandemics
doi:10.1016/j.vaccine.2011.02.053 | How to Cite or Link Using DOI
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The 1918 influenza pandemic hastened the decline of tuberculosis in the United States: An age, period, cohort analysis


Andrew Noymera, b, c, Corresponding Author Contact Information, E-mail The Corresponding Author

a Department of Sociology, University of California, Irvine, United States

b Department of Population Health and Disease Prevention, University of California, Irvine, United States

c Health and Global Change (HGC) Project, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria
Received 22 November 2010;
revised 11 January 2011;
accepted 15 February 2011.
Available online 12 July 2011.

Abstract

The effect of the 1918 influenza pandemic on other diseases is a neglected topic in historical epidemiology. This paper takes up the hypothesis that the influenza pandemic affected the long-term decline of tuberculosis through selective mortality, such that many people with tuberculosis were killed in 1918, depressing subsequent tuberculosis mortality and transmission. Regularly collected vital statistics data on mortality of influenza and tuberculosis in the US are presented and analyzed demographically. The available population-level data fail to contradict the selection hypothesis. More work is needed to understand fully the role of multiple morbidities in the 1918 influenza pandemic.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X1100288X