- Brain Decline, Dementia Common Among Older American Indians
- Stroke, Migraine, Alzheimer’s: Climate Change Will Likely Make Them Worse
- Immunotherapy Before and After Surgery Boosts Lung Cancer Survival
- Cream Cheese From Aldi, Hy-Vee Stores Recalled Due to Salmonella Risk
- Seeing Your Doctors Via Zoom? What’s Behind Them Matters
- Mediterranean Diet Could Be a Stress-Buster, Study Finds
- PTSD Triples Odds for Teeth Grinding, Study Finds
- Dreams Might Help You Process Bad Experiences
- Lymphoma: Know Your Treatment Options
- FDA Approves First Self-Test Collection Kit for HPV
Health Highlights: Dec. 12, 2017
Here are some of the latest health and medical news developments, compiled by the editors of HealthDay:
Next Flu Pandemic Could Appear in Spring or Summer: Study
The next flu pandemic could appear in spring or summer rather than winter, according to researchers.
They found that while winter is the normal flu season, many major flu outbreaks were first detected between late March and early July. That includes the 1889, 1918 (the Spanish flu), 1957, 1968 and 2009 (the swine flu) epidemics, The New York Times reported.
A person with the seasonal flu may have some protection against other flu viruses, even genetically different ones, according to Spencer Fox, a graduate student in infectious disease modeling at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the study authors.
That protection lasts about six weeks and even a highly infectious flu virus would be temporarily slowed during the winter if a large proportion of the population already had the seasonal flu, Fox told The Times.
But the new virus could take hold once that protection fades. That would be in late March at the earliest.
The study was published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology.
Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.