Targeted treatment could contain pandemic influenza.

2004 MAR 31 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- In a future outbreak of pandemic influenza, such as the three pandemics that sickened and killed millions of people during the 20th century, supplies of flu vaccine might not be available quickly enough to contain the spread of disease.

However, according to research by biostatisticians in Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, many thousands of deaths could be prevented if antiviral agents were given to the close contacts of those with suspected cases of flu until adequate supplies of vaccine could be manufactured and distributed.

The results of the research by Emory professors of biostatistics Ira Longini Jr., PhD, and M. Elizabeth Halloran, MD, DSc, and their colleagues Azhar Nizam, MS, and Yang Yang, BSc, will be published as a special article in the American Journal of Epidemiology on April 1, 2004.

The Emory scientists used a dynamic stochastic simulation model of an influenza pandemic or bioterrorist attack for an agent similar to influenza A(H2N2), which caused the Asian influenza pandemic of 1957-58 and resulted in approximately 70,000 deaths in the U.S. (A stochastic model includes elements of chance or probability). They determined that if no interventions were used in a similar pandemic, 33% of the population would become ill, resulting in a death rate of 0.58 per 1000 people. If antiviral prophylaxis were given to close contacts of 80% of people with suspected influenza, however, in a strategy that the authors call "targeted antiviral prophylaxis" (TAP), the epidemic could be contained. If TAP were begun within 1 day of identifying suspected flu cases and used for up to 8 weeks, only 2% of the population would become ill, and the death rate would be only 0.04 per 1000 people. The researchers ...