Richard S A, Sugaya N, Simonsen L, Miller M A, Viboud C
Fogarty International Center, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
Epidemiol Infect. 2009 Aug;137(8):1062-72. doi: 10.1017/S0950268809002088. Epub 2009 Feb 12.
Historical studies of influenza pandemics can provide insight into transmission and mortality patterns, and may aid in planning for a future pandemic. Here, we analyse historical vital statistics and quantify the age-specific mortality patterns associated with the 1918-1920 influenza pandemic in Japan, USA, and UK. All three countries showed highly elevated mortality risk in young adults relative to surrounding non-pandemic years. By contrast, the risk of death was low in the very young and very old. In Japan, the overall mortality impact was not limited to winter 1918-1919, and continued during winter 1919-1920. Mortality impact varied as much as threefold across the 47 Japanese prefectures, and differences in baseline mortality, population demographics, and density explained a small fraction of these variations. Our study highlights important geographical variations in timing and mortality impact of historical pandemics, in particular between the Eastern and Western hemispheres. In a future pandemic, vaccination in one region could save lives even months after the emergence of a pandemic virus in another region.
对流感大流行的历史研究可以深入了解传播和死亡模式，并可能有助于为未来的大流行制定规划。在此，我们分析了历史生命统计数据，并量化了与1918 - 1920年日本、美国和英国流感大流行相关的特定年龄死亡率模式。与周围非大流行年份相比，所有这三个国家的年轻人死亡率风险都大幅上升。相比之下，非常年幼和非常年长的人死亡风险较低。在日本，总体死亡影响不仅限于1918 - 1919年冬季，在1919 - 1920年冬季仍在持续。日本47个县的死亡影响差异高达三倍，基线死亡率、人口统计学和密度的差异只能解释这些变化的一小部分。我们的研究突出了历史大流行在时间和死亡影响方面的重要地理差异，特别是在东半球和西半球之间。在未来的大流行中，即使在大流行病毒在另一个地区出现数月后，在一个地区进行疫苗接种也可以挽救生命。
