Chinese man hospitalized with H7N9 infection
Chinese health authorities today announced another H7N9 avian flu infection in Guangdong province, the area's third reported case in the past week, according to a statement from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP).
The latest case is in a 63-year-old man who is hospitalized in critical condition. He is from Yangjiang, a city in the southeastern province that is home to another recently reported H7N9 patient, a 65-year-old woman. The statement did not report any poultry exposures the man may have had.
A report from Xinhua, China's state news agency, said the provincial government has sent five inspection teams to 21 cities and a district to boost H7N9 prevention and control efforts.
Though H7N9 cases have subsided in most of the mainland areas that were part of the outbreak in the spring, five cases have been reported from Guangdong province since early August. And two patients who were recently hospitalized with H7N9 infections in Hong Kong were thought to have been exposed to the virus in the nearby Guangdong city of Shenzhen.
Dec 18 Hong Kong CHP statement
Dec 18 Xinhua story
In other developments, the World Health Organization (WHO) yesterday confirmed the other two H7N9 cases reported over the past week. One is in a 39-year-old man who got sick on Dec 6 and was hospitalized on Dec 11, where he remains in critical condition.
The other patient is the 65-year-old woman noted above, who was exposed to live poultry and became ill on Dec 11. She was hospitalized on Dec 15 and is listed in critical condition.
The WHO said so far there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission. The newly reported case from China pushes the global H7N9 total to 146 cases, which includes 45 deaths.
Dec 17 WHO statement
Study says RSV milder than flu in older adults
Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) causes milder illness than influenza does in adults 50 and older, according to a recent study in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
Researchers from the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin collected data on nasopharyngeal swabs from 2004 through 2010. They tested 2,225 samples for RSV and other respiratory viruses using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. One or more viruses were detected in 1,202 (54%) of participants.
The team found that hospital admission within 30 days after illness onset was less common among RSV patients than flu patients (odds ratio, 0.54). They also found that RSV was more common in 65- to 70-year-olds compared with those 50 to 64.
"Knowing that adults' susceptibility to RSV increases as they age is important for health care providers and public health officials to note as they treat and monitor respiratory illnesses this season," said study co-author Edward Belongia, MD, director of Marshfield's Epidemiology Research Center, in a Marshfield press release yesterday.
"Although this study showed RSV may lead to fewer complications than flu, it still has the potential to cause serious respiratory illness, especially in older adults with weakened immune systems or other pre-existing conditions," added Marshfield epidemiologist and co-author Maria Sundaram, MSPH.
Dec 18 Marshfield Clinic press release
Nov 21 Clin Infect Dis abstract
