Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.
J Theor Biol. 2011 Nov 7;288:29-34. doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.08.003. Epub 2011 Aug 16.
Younger age groups account for proportionally more mortality in influenza pandemics than in seasonal influenza epidemics. Mechanisms that might explain this include young people suffering from an over-reactive immune system ("cytokine storm"), older people benefiting from cross-immunity from a wider variety of previous influenza infections ("antigenic history"), and lifetime immune responses in all people being shaped by their first influenza A infection ("antigenic imprinting" or "original antigenic sin"). We examined whether these mechanisms can explain age-specific influenza mortality patterns, using the complete database of individual deaths in Canada from 1951 to 1999. The mortality pattern during the 1957 pandemic indicates that antigenic imprinting plays an important role in determining age-specific influenza virulence and that both shift years and major drift years contribute significantly to antigenic imprints. This information should help pandemic planners to identify age groups that might respond differently to novel influenza strains.
在流感大流行中，年轻人群的死亡率相对于季节性流感流行而言更高。可能导致这种情况的机制包括年轻人的免疫系统过度反应（“细胞因子风暴”），老年人从先前更广泛的流感感染中受益于交叉免疫（“抗原历史”），以及所有人的终生免疫反应受到他们第一次甲型流感感染的影响（“抗原印记”或“原始抗原性罪恶”）。我们使用 1951 年至 1999 年加拿大个人死亡的完整数据库，研究了这些机制是否可以解释特定年龄的流感死亡率模式。1957 年大流行期间的死亡率模式表明，抗原印记在确定特定年龄的流感毒力方面起着重要作用，而且转变年份和主要漂移年份都对抗原印记有重大贡献。这些信息应该有助于大流行规划者确定可能对新型流感株有不同反应的年龄组。
