In January, just when H1N1 swine flu virus might well have been hitting the headlines as the cause of one of the UK's worst epidemics of all time, there was an outbreak of a rather different kind. This was an outpouring of media assertions that last year both scientists and the government had grossly exaggerated the virus's likely impact. Alleged reasons for needless panic-mongering ranged from...

Acute necrotizing encephalopathy of childhood (ANEC) is a rare condition characterized by the presence of multifocal symmetrical brain lesions involving mainly thalami, brainstem, cerebellum and white matter. ANEC is a serious and life threatening complication of simple viral infections. We present a case of a young child who developed this condition with classical clinical and radiological fin...

What Do the Swine Flu EUAs Mean for the Current Outbreak? On April 27, 2009, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for the swine flu outbreak in response to requests by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). [1] One of the reasons the EUAs could be issued was because the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared a...

To the Editor—Medical personnel constitute an important group at high risk of getting swine flu.1 Among medical personnel, medical students seem to be at higher risk of infection due to their lack of experience.2 I would like to report a case demonstrating that medical students in their preclinical years are also at risk of getting swine flu but are a forgotten group. An 18-year-old male presen...