Special pleading - Don't be a Bug-Hatchery!
Every year during the cold and flu season I am fighting a losing battle not only against the bacteria and viruses that cause respiratory diseases, but also against my fellow human beings that insist on spreading them around.
Since I have asthma this is actually quite serious for me, so I have composed this blog-post, and copied & pasted a few info-bits and links, to make my plea one more time:
If you are sick, stay at home!
Please.
This is why you should stay at home with a cold
(1) The common cold, though mainly harmless for most healthy individuals, can allow other, more serious, respiratory diseases to take hold - they enter the body while it is still weakened from the cold.
Note: Some people are not so healthy, and the common cold can affect them quite badly, leading to weeks or even months of being unwell. Even if you are lucky enough not to experience a cold as a big deal, someone else may be seriously incapacitated by it.
(2) The respiratory diseases that can follow a common cold, and perhaps the cold itself, can trigger acute myocardial infarction - heart attacks! According to the research quoted below, the risk of having a heart attack is 17 times higher in the seven days after a respiratory infection.
Note: A few years ago the BBC reported a long term UK study that showed that civil servants who went to work with a cold had a 50% higher incidence of heart attacks in the following decades than their colleagues who stayed at home with a cold.
This is true for everyone, not just asthmatics.
Note: There are people who have both asthma and a family history of heart disease - like me. Which might explain why I really really really don't like it when people try to pass on their colds to me. I know it is selfish, but I would like to be alive a little while longer .....
(3) The majority of serious asthma attacks are occasioned by respiratory diseases - and every year 250,000 people die from asthma related causes in the world.
Plea: Save a life, stay at home when you are sick!
(4) Many of the microbes that cause diseases have found ways of influencing their hosts - like you and me. And one of the nastiest things they do is motivate us to seek human company when we are infected - which makes sense for the microbes who seek to infect other hosts, but not to us, who would prefer not to get sick. Influenza viruses, for example, are notorious for this.
Note: Don't let those microbes dominate you - show them who's boss! I mean you, not them, obviously.
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Interesting Info /Research to illustrate the points made above
Respiratory infection can trigger acute myocardial infarction
By Nicole MacKee
The risk of having a heart attack is 17 times higher in the seven days after a respiratory infection, according to Australian research published in the Internal Medicine Journal.
The risk of having a heart attack is 17 times higher in the seven days after a respiratory infection, according to Australian research published in the Internal Medicine Journal.
Senior author Professor Geoffrey Tofler, a cardiologist from Royal North Shore Hospital, The University of Sydney and Heart Research Australia, said the findings confirmed suggestions from previous studies that respiratory infection could act as a trigger for myocardial infarction.
‘This link may also contribute to the seasonal variation and winter peak of heart attack,’ Professor Tofler told Cardiology Today.
The study used coronary angiography to investigate the link between respiratory infections, such as pneumonia, bronchitis and influenza, and increased risk of a myocardial infarction. The researchers noted that absence of angiographic data was a limitation in previous registry- and record-based studies because elevated troponin levels and ECG changes may also occur in myocarditis due to respiratory infection.
In an analysis of the Triggers and Modifiers of Acute Myocardial Infarction (TAMAMI) study, researchers investigated 578 consecutive patients with myocardial infarction due to coronary artery blockage at Royal North Shore hospital. The patients, who had an average age of 59.5 years and were mostly men (84%), provided information on recent and usual occurrence of symptoms of respiratory infection.
Patients were interviewed about their symptoms and their activities before the onset of symptoms, including if they experienced a ‘flu-like illness with fever and sore throat.’ They were considered affected if they reported sore throat, cough, fever, sinus pain, flu-like symptoms, or if they reported a diagnosis of pneumonia or bronchitis.
Among the patients, 100 (17%) reported symptoms of respiratory infection within seven days, and 123 (21%) within 31 days of the myocardial infarction.
A second analysis was among those with symptoms restricted to the upper respiratory tract, which included the common cold, pharyngitis, rhinitis and sinusitis. Lead author Dr Lorcan Ruane said: ‘For those participants who reported upper respiratory tract infection symptoms the risk increase was less, but was still elevated by 13-fold.’
‘Possible mechanisms for why respiratory infection may trigger a heart attack include platelet activation and a prothrombotic state, inflammation, cytokine release and coronary plaque disruption, and haemodynamic effects such as tachycardia and vasoconstriction,’ Professor Tofler said. The increased risk of a heart attack peaked in the first seven days and gradually reduced, but remained elevated for one month.
While the absolute risk of any one episode of respiratory infection triggering a heart attack is low, the researchers said awareness of the link provides an opportunity to emphasise preventive measures such as influenza and pneumonia vaccination, particularly for those at increased risk or who have contact with susceptible individuals.
Asthma triggers
One study showed respiratory viral infections were responsible for a whopping 85% of asthma attacks.
Another showed they were responsible for 85% of asthma attacks in children and 50% of asthma attacks in adults. Yet another showed they were responsible for a whopping 70% of all hospitaladmissions for asthma. Of those, 18.8% had both a viral and a bacterial infection, making them the most likely to be readmitted once discharged.
Imagine being paralysed by fear as you struggle to breathe, unable to speak, unable to ask for help. That's what an asthma attack feels like.
Asthma is a serious global health problem affecting at least 300 million people, with a high global burden of disability. Despite major advances in the treatment of asthma and the development of several asthma guidelines over the past decades, people still die of asthma currently. According to WHO estimates, approximately 250,000 people die prematurely each year from asthma.
Change in human social behavior in response to a common vaccine
Reiber C1, Shattuck EC, Fiore S, Alperin P, Davis V, Moore J.
PURPOSE:
The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that exposure to a directly transmitted human pathogen-flu virus-increases human social behavior presymptomatically. This hypothesis is grounded in empirical evidence that animals infected with pathogens rarely behave like uninfected animals, and in evolutionary theory as applied to infectious disease. Such behavioral changes have the potential to increase parasite transmission and/or host solicitation of care.
CONCLUSIONS:
These results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior. Although the adaptive significance of this finding awaits further investigation, we anticipate it will advance ecological and evolutionary understanding of human-pathogen interactions, and will have implications for infectious disease epidemiology and prevention.
PURPOSE:
The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that exposure to a directly transmitted human pathogen-flu virus-increases human social behavior presymptomatically. This hypothesis is grounded in empirical evidence that animals infected with pathogens rarely behave like uninfected animals, and in evolutionary theory as applied to infectious disease. Such behavioral changes have the potential to increase parasite transmission and/or host solicitation of care.
METHODS:
We carried out a prospective, longitudinal study that followed participants across a known point-source exposure to a form of influenza virus (immunizations), and compared social behavior before and after exposure using each participant as his/her own control.
RESULTS:
We carried out a prospective, longitudinal study that followed participants across a known point-source exposure to a form of influenza virus (immunizations), and compared social behavior before and after exposure using each participant as his/her own control.
RESULTS:
Human social behavior does, indeed, change with exposure. Compared to the 48 hours pre-exposure, participants interacted with significantly more people, and in significantly larger groups, during the 48 hours immediately post-exposure.
CONCLUSIONS:
These results show that there is an immediate active behavioral response to infection before the expected onset of symptoms or sickness behavior. Although the adaptive significance of this finding awaits further investigation, we anticipate it will advance ecological and evolutionary understanding of human-pathogen interactions, and will have implications for infectious disease epidemiology and prevention.
