Lancet: Majority of flu infections are asymptomatic, including H1N1

[natasa778]

Medscape article

Although 18% of the population was infected in recent outbreaks of seasonal influenza and in the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, only 23% of infections were symptomatic

... Across all 5 influenza winter seasons, the rate of influenza was, on average, 22 times higher than rates of disease recorded by the Royal College of General Practitioners Sentinel Influenza-Like Illness Surveillance Scheme.

Full study



This imo brings into question the dismissal of 'viral onset' of diseases such as ME on the basis of there being no visible 'viral symptoms' before the onset in the majority of patients (not to mention the long latency, or consequences taking long to manifest etc).

If a 'loud' virus such as influenza can fly under the radar like this, what can be expected from 'quieter' viruses in terms of presence/absence of surface symptoms?

 

[Ren]

Does this fit or overlap with the idea of atypical pneumonia / "walking pneumonia" too?

 

[peggy-sue]

Interesting. 4 of us who had spent christmas together all got long term chronic conditions after being exposed to the 'flu one of us had. Only one person had 'flu symptoms.
He got ME. I got ME, my brother got a 9 month PVFS and my partner got IBS, shortly after.

 

[natasa778]

This also reminds me of Parkinson's clusters. Some can be traced to clusters that are visibly linked to infections, like the Spanish Flu epidemics.

Some are just more mysterious clusters. Isn't this the case of Michael J Fox, where (if the story is correct) a number of people who worked on the same set were diagnosed with Parkinson in relatively short time span...