Influenza pandemics are complex events that have occurred frequently throughout human history, three during the past century alone. Now the world is facing the first 21st century pandemic, and the comparison among them is essential to identify common epidemiologic patterns, clinical characteristics, and outcomes. The evolution of medicine, including diagnostic and treatment options, the critical care advances, and global responses are new interventions that could modify the general outcome of the pandemic. Learning from past and current events could lead to a plan for prompt and efficient response in future pandemics and may be help us to predict the unpredictable.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11908-010-0097-0 | DOI Listing |
Innovation (Camb)
January 2025
School of Biomedical Sciences, Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), Hong Kong SAR, China.
In conclusion, the distinct evolution patterns of panzootic influenza A(H5Nx) compared to A(H1N1) and A(H3N2) complicate vaccine development. Effective strategies must consider these unique patterns and the impact of pre-existing immunity. Leveraging AI-based methods for optimized antigen design is essential to mitigate the potential impact of emerging antigenically variable strains and will provide valuable insights for developing more effective vaccines to prepare for future pandemics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInfluenza Other Respir Viruses
January 2025
Área de Investigación en Vacunas, Fundación para el Fomento de la Investigación Sanitaria y Biomédica de la Comunitat Valenciana, Valencia, Spain.
SARS-CoV-2, which originated in China in late 2019, quickly fueled the global COVID-19 pandemic, profoundly impacting health and the economy worldwide. A series of vaccines, mostly based on the full SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein, were rapidly developed, showing excellent humoral and cellular responses and high efficacy against both symptomatic infection and severe disease. However, viral evolution and the waning humoral neutralizing responses strongly challenged vaccine long term effectiveness, mainly against symptomatic infection, making necessary a strategy of repeated and updated booster shots.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Public Health (Oxf)
January 2025
Center for Economic and Social Research, University of Southern California, 635 Downey Way, VPD, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA.
Background: Democrats are more likely to be vaccinated for COVID-19 than Republicans. It is unknown if political polarization surrounding the COVID-19 vaccine has affected flu vaccine uptake. The purpose of this study is to examine the partisan differences in annual flu vaccine uptake before and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLOS Glob Public Health
January 2025
Center for Global Health Science and Security, Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, DC, United States of America.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) was an important public source of information - not only about the pandemic, but also thousands of other potential health emergencies. Here, we examine the 242 reports published in the WHO Disease Outbreak News (DON) during the first four years of the Covid-19 pandemic (2020 to 2023), and document the diseases and regions that were reported. We find that multinational epidemics of diseases like Ebola virus and MERS-CoV continue to dominate the DON.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Virol
January 2025
MRC Translational Immune Discovery Unit, Weatherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Unlabelled: Current influenza vaccination approaches protect against specific viral strains, but do not consistently induce broad and long-lasting protection to the diversity of circulating influenza viruses. Single-cycle viruses delivered to the respiratory tract may offer a promising solution as they safely express a diverse array of viral antigens by undergoing just one round of cell infection in their host and stimulate broadly protective resident memory T-cell responses in the lung. We have previously developed a vaccine candidate called S-FLU, which is limited to a single cycle of infection by inactivation of the hemagglutinin signal sequence and induces a broadly cross-reactive T-cell response and antibodies to neuraminidase, but fails to induce neutralizing antibodies to hemagglutinin after intranasal administration.
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