BACKGROUND The new swine influenza (H1N1) requires fast and accurate diagnosis. Currently, there are few reports about the diagnostic performance of influenza antigen tests with regard to the H1N1 virus infection. We evaluated the reactivity of eight commercially available rapid antigen tests in samples from confirmed infected patients. METHODS From 23 patients tested positive by polymerase c...

Genomic Signal Processing is a relatively new field in bioinformatics, in which signal processing algorithms and methods are used to study functional structures in the DNA. An appropriate mapping of the DNA sequence into one or more numerical sequences enables the use of many digital signal processing tools in the analysis of different genomic sequences. Also, a novel Influenza A (H1N1) virus o...

BACKGROUND To probe seroepidemiology of the 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) among health care workers (HCWs) in a children's hospital. METHODS From August 2009 to March 2010, serum samples were drawn from 150 HCWs in a children's hospital in Taipei before the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic, before H1N1 vaccination, and after the pandemic. HCWs who had come into direct contact with 2009 inf...

BACKGROUND Presentation of pandemic H1N1 influenza (H1N1) is widely evolving as it continues to involve different geographic locations and populations. This study was conducted to improve the precision of clinical diagnosis of H1N1 (2009) influenza infection in an outpatient setting. MATERIALS AND METHODS A prospective cross-sectional study was conducted among adult patients (age >15 years) w...

A remarkable feature of the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza virus is its efficient transmissibility in humans compared to that of precursor strains from the triple-reassortant swine influenza virus lineage, which cause only sporadic infections in humans. The viral components essential for this phenotype have not been fully elucidated. In this study, we aimed to determine the viral factors critical...

Here we present a review of the literature of influenza modeling studies, and discuss how these models can provide insights into the future of the currently circulating novel strain of influenza A (H1N1), formerly known as swine flu. We discuss how the feasibility of controlling an epidemic critically depends on the value of the Basic Reproduction Number (R0). The R0 for novel influenza A (H1N1...

The emergence of a swine influenza virus (H1N1) pandemic strain earlier this year prompted a huge worldwide effort to produce swine flu vaccines in time for the winter flu season. Justine Davies reports.

This thesis reports on the use of Twitter during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic to explore its use as an “infoveillance” approach complementary to traditional surveys and content analysis. This study aimed to: 1) report on the use of “H1N1” versus “swine flu”, 2) conduct a qualitative analysis of tweet content, and 3) assess the feasibility of Twitter as a real-time content, sentiment, and public atten...

A swine influenza outbreak occurred on a commercial pig farm in Thailand. Outbreak investigation indicated that pigs were co-infected with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus and seasonal influenza (H1N1) viruses. No evidence of gene reassortment or pig-to-human transmission of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 virus was found during the outbreak.