China
Africa
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The 1918 Influenza A Pandemic
Published in Patricia G. Melloy, Viruses and Society, 2023
For our purposes, I will refer to the influenza pandemic of 1918 as the “1918 influenza pandemic” or the “1918 pandemic,” but at the time, the pandemic was known as “Spanish influenza.” How did the pandemic get such a name? Well, news reporting of widespread pneumonia and/or influenza was not censored in Spain, many say because Spain was neutral in World War I and did not need to suppress a potential impact on its adversaries. The King of Spain and about 8 million people in Spain got the flu in spring 1918 (Crosby 1989; Barry 2018).
The Neurologic Disorders in Film
Published in Eelco F. M. Wijdicks, Neurocinema—The Sequel, 2022
The overlap with the Spanish influenza epidemic has been intriguing, and some cases of influenza may have been misdiagnosed as encephalitis lethargica. When post-encephalitic parkinsonism appeared, it presented with a catatonia (being frozen in a certain position). Facial expressions disappeared, and very often upward, involuntary eye movements (oculogyric crises) occurred. Rigidity was common, but tremor—as is typical in Parkinson’s disease—was not. The number of patients who developed post-encephalitic Parkinson’s disease was small despite hundreds of descriptions. This episode was a significant period in the history of neurology, and sufficient proof of concept has been established.
The political nightmare of the plague
Published in J. Michael Ryan, COVID-19, 2020
Despite protesters’ claims, the use of quarantine to contain disease is not an unprecedented or new development. In the United States, quarantine measures were employed in response to the 1918 Spanish influenza outbreak with varying degrees of success. Based on examination of that pandemic, researchers at the National Institutes of Health (2007) concluded that rapid, early quarantine restrictions were vital for containing the disease. Quantitative analysis of mortality rates during the Spanish influenza pandemic indicated that quarantine measures, such as closing nonessential businesses, limiting public gatherings, restricting travel, and mandating mask wearing was linked to a 50% decrease in mortality (Hatchett, Mecher, and Lipsitch 2007). Quarantines have been the standard state response to disease throughout the history of the United States, from 17th-century enforcements of bills of health to prevent diseases coming from overseas, the forced isolation of tuberculosis patients to combat the “Great White Plague” of the 18th century, to containment measures employed to limit the spread of the 2003 SARS outbreak (Gensini, Yacoub, and Conti 2004).
Emerging antiviral therapies and drugs for the treatment of influenza
Published in Expert Opinion on Emerging Drugs, 2022
Jinshen Wang, Yihang Sun, Shuwen Liu
Influenza is an acute respiratory infectious disease caused by influenza viruses divided into four types: A, B, C and D. Indeed, due to antigenic transformation and drift, influenza A virus (IAVs) possesses the strongest infectivity and the highest mortality rate. Unlike IAVs, influenza B viruses mutate less, causing seasonal epidemics but rarely pandemics. Influenza C and D viruses are highly antigenically stable and only lead to mild upper respiratory tract infections. According to the antigenic features of two glycoproteins on the virus surface, including hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), IAVs can be divided into 18 subtypes of HA (H1–H18) and 10 subtypes of NA (N1–N10) [1,2]. There have been four influenza outbreaks in human history. The first pandemic (Spanish influenza 1918–1919) caused by the H1N1 virus was responsible for 50 to 100 million deaths [3,4]. The ‘Asian flu’ caused by the H2N2 virus in 1957–1959 appeared in China and then spread to more than 20 countries worldwide, resulting in about 45 million infections and 1.1 million deaths [5,6]. In 1968–1969, the H3N2 virus replaced the H2N2 virus causing the Hong Kong pandemic, leading to approximately 1 million deaths [7,8]. In 2009, the swine-derived H1N1 virus spread to more than 30 countries worldwide through human-to-human transmission, which caused about 19,000 deaths and posed a huge threat to global public health security [8,9]. It is worth noting that since 1997, several avian influenza viruses have exhibited cross-species transmission and spread to humans, such as H5N1 and H7N9 [10–13].
Registered clinical trials investigating treatment of long COVID: a scoping review and recommendations for research
Published in Infectious Diseases, 2022
Felicia Ceban, Alexia Leber, Muhammad Youshay Jawad, Mathew Yu, Leanna M. W. Lui, Mehala Subramaniapillai, Joshua D. Di Vincenzo, Hartej Gill, Nelson B. Rodrigues, Bing Cao, Yena Lee, Kangguang Lin, Rodrigo B. Mansur, Roger Ho, Matthew J. Burke, Joshua D. Rosenblat, Roger S. McIntyre
Persistent symptoms are not uncommon following infection with viral or bacterial agents. For example, outbreaks of fatigue syndrome (including general malaise and neurological abnormalities) were documented following the Spanish influenza of 1918 [20] and the 2002–2004 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic [21,22]. Previous psychoneuroimmunological research has established links between pro-inflammatory cytokines and neuropsychiatric symptoms including depression and cognitive impairment [23–25]. However, despite their long history, treatments with robust efficacy for post-viral syndromes and related conditions, such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), have not been developed. Chronic ‘unexplained’ (± post-infectious) symptoms remain a controversial and poorly understood topic in medicine. A spectrum of sub-populations may exist, and some patients’ symptoms may root from complex brain network dysfunction seen in functional neurological disorders and/or somatic symptom disorders [26]. The pervasiveness of COVID-19 provides the exigency to advance our understanding of post-infectious syndromes and related conditions.
Is post-COVID syndrome an autoimmune disease?
Published in Expert Review of Clinical Immunology, 2022
Juan-Manuel Anaya, María Herrán, Santiago Beltrán, Manuel Rojas
Over the years, different health crises have arisen caused by viruses or bacteria, such as the Spanish flu, polio, and Ebola. Strikingly, some of the affected patients developed symptoms after the resolution of the disease, as in the case of Spanish influenza, where cases of encephalitis lethargica were reported. Polio also caused a post-polio syndrome [44], and the emergence of autoimmunity has been described in Ebola virus disease survivors [45]. Other examples are Epstein-Barr virus (EBV – glandular fever) and Ross River virus (epidemic polyarthritis), which are commonly associated with long-lasting disabling symptomatology [46,47]. Fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, neurocognitive compromise, and mood disturbances are the most common clinical manifestations after acute disease [47]. Such clinical features may last about six months and may be associated with the acute infection’s severity [47].