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A full slate of stories tonight from CIDRAP News.
First, reporting by Lisa Schnirring on today’s WHO (World Health Organization) press conference on the H1N1 pandemic. Followed by an article by Robert Roos on the controversy surrounding the retraction of a recent study on the efficacy of N95 respirators vs surgical masks.
And finally, some news briefs. Follow the links for more details.
WHO warns countries not to underestimate pandemic virus
Lisa Schnirring
Staff Writer
Nov 5, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – An official from the World Health Organization (WHO) today said he expects serious cases and deaths as pandemic flu activity picks up in the Northern Hemisphere, and he warned people not to underestimate the virus, even though illnesses are often mild.
At a media briefing today, Keiji Fukuda, MD, special adviser on pandemic flu to the WHO director-general, said virus activity remains at high levels in the United States, where fall activity has already exceeded the peak of some of the worst winter seasonal flu outbreaks, and in Mexico, where the number of illnesses has topped the country's spring outbreak.
Flu activity is picking up across European countries such as the Ukraine, "where clearly they are seeing high levels of infections," Fukuda said. Countries in eastern Asia, such as Mongolia, are seeing rising pandemic flu case numbers. He said earlier this fall the seasonal H3N2 virus was common in some parts of eastern Asia, but as the pandemic H1N1 strain becomes dominant, the numbers of H3N2 viruses in those regions are decreasing.
Reanalysis changes findings in respiratory protection study
Robert Roos
Nov 5, 2009 (CIDRAP News) – A reanalysis prompted by reviewers has changed the conclusions of a study comparing N-95 respirators with surgical masks, raising questions about earlier findings that the N-95 devices were clearly more effective in protecting healthcare workers from respiratory illness.
Raina MacIntyre and colleagues first presented their findings at a medical conference in mid-September, reporting that N-95s, compared with no respiratory protection, reduced the risk of confirmed influenza in hospital workers by 75%, whereas surgical masks had no protective effect. The findings were hailed by some experts as a landmark in a field where few clinical studies have been done.
But at the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) annual meeting last week, MacIntyre's team presented a new analysis of their data, made at the request of peer reviewers. The reanalysis excluded the control group of unprotected workers. The result was that workers who wore N-95s still appeared to be better off than those with surgical masks, but the differences were no longer statistically significant.
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