Novel H1N1 influenza can cause severe respiratory illness, profound lung damage, and death even in patients with no underlying conditions to make them vulnerable, a team of physicians from Mexico report in a rush article published online today by the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)...
Like the first set of patients, the healthcare workers and family members who fell ill in the second generation of cases were primarily younger, a situation mirrored in the second paper published today in NEJM. The analysis is by scientists from Arizona State University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the US National Institutes of Health, along with the Mexican Ministry of Health and National Institute of Public Health.
They found that, out of 2,155 reported cases of severe pneumonia and 2,582 lab-confirmed samples of the new flu submitted in Mexico during the pandemic's first month, 71% of severe pneumonias and 87% of deaths occurred in those between the ages of 5 and 59. That pattern is unlike any observed during seasonal flu in Mexico but matches records from the three pandemics of the 20th century, they said.
The mantra of 'underlying condition' in the news when describing a death or hospitalization is ture (75% of the time) but some people don't have an underlying condition and get sick.