Background. In order to track influenza activity, flu-like patient records collected from health care providers are combined to generate an estimate every week during the flu season. However, this estimate is problematic in terms of timeliness and granularity. A promising alternative is to infer flu activity with fine-grained, timely digital surveillance data. Fitting these extra measurements o...

BACKGROUND Oseltamivir phosphate (OP; Tamiflu) is a prodrug of the anti-influenza neuraminidase inhibitor oseltamivir carboxylate (OC) and has been developed for the treatment and prevention of both A and B strains of influenza. The recent increase in OP resistance in influenza A virus (H1N1; commonly called "swine flu") has raised questions about the widespread use of Tamiflu in seasonal epide...

OBJECTIVE The Influenza Prevention Policy ("the Policy") aims to increase seasonal influenza vaccination coverage among British Columbia (BC) health care workers (HCWs). PARTICIPANTS HCWs who work in publicly funded facilities and attend patient care areas. SETTING The Policy was announced in August 2012 and took effect province-wide during the 2012/13 flu season. INTERVENTION BC HCWs are...

Objective We developed geo-targeted social media application program interfaces (APIs) for Twitter and a web-based social media analytics and research testbed (SMART) dashboard to analyze “flu” related tweets. During the 2013-14 flu season, for 10 cities with active surveillance for influenza (ILI), we correlated weekly tweeting rates and visual patterns of flu tweeting rates. To facilitate wid...

The clinical findings of influenza overlap those of community-acquired bacterial pneumonia (CABP), and influenza infection can be complicated by bacterial infections. Reviewed here are the epidemiology, pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) with special emphasis on considerations during influenza season.

Seasonal influenza is a major public health concern, and the first line of defense is the flu shot. Antigenic drifts and the high rate of influenza transmission require annual updates to the flu shot composition. The World Health Organization recommends which flu strains to include in the annual vaccine, based on surveillance and epidemiological analysis. There are two critical decisions regard...

The availability of weekly Web-based participatory surveillance data on self-reported influenza-like illness (ILI), defined here as self-reported fever and cough/sore throat, over several influenza seasons allows for estimation of the incidence of influenza infection in population cohorts. We demonstrate this using syndromic data reported through the Influenzanet surveillance platform in the Ne...

Chief Editor Anita Simonds explains what's happening on the frontline of the flu season http://ow.ly/fBW630iiYC5.

Recent reports have detected an increase in the number of patients with acute coronary syndromes during the flu season. More recently, case-control studies of patients with prior infarction have shown that flu vaccination significantly reduces the risk of myocardial necrosis and strokes. The World Health Organization recommended flu vaccination for the Southern Hemisphere in the winter of 2001....