Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 5, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0009360
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Funding
- Research and Policy for Infectious Disease Dynamics (RAPIDD) program of the Science and Technology Directorate
- Department of Homeland Security
- Fogarty International Center
- National Institutes of Health (NIH)
- James F. McDonnell Foundation
- National Science Foundation [DEB-0749097]
- NIH Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) [U01-GM087719-01]
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research [PTL97125, PAP93425]
- Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research
- Division Of Environmental Biology
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0749097] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Background: As Pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza spreads around the globe, it strikes school-age children more often than adults. Although there is some evidence of pre-existing immunity among older adults, this alone may not explain the significant gap in age-specific infection rates. Methods and Findings: Based on a retrospective analysis of pandemic strains of influenza from the last century, we show that school-age children typically experience the highest attack rates in primarily naive populations, with the burden shifting to adults during the subsequent season. Using a parsimonious network-based mathematical model which incorporates the changing distribution of contacts in the susceptible population, we demonstrate that new pandemic strains of influenza are expected to shift the epidemiological landscape in exactly this way. Conclusions: Our analysis provides a simple demographic explanation for the age bias observed for H1N1/09 attack rates, and suggests that this bias may shift in coming months. These results have significant implications for the allocation of public health resources for H1N1/09 and future influenza pandemics.
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