Affiliation:
1. European Influenza Surveillance Scheme Coordination Centre, Netherlands Institute for Health Services Research (NIVEL), Utrecht, the Netherlands
2. Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
3. Members of EISS (winter 2005-2006), see article supplement
Abstract
Influenza activity in Europe during the winter 2005-2006 started late January - early February 2006 and first occurred in the Netherlands, France, Greece and England. Subsequently, countries were affected in a random pattern across Europe and the period of influenza activity lasted till the end of April. In contrast to the winter seasons in the period 2001-2005, no west-east pattern was detected. In 12 out of 23 countries, the consultation rates for influenza-like illness or acute respiratory infection in the winter 2005-2006 were similar or higher than in the winter 2004-2005, despite a dominance of influenza B viruses that normally cause milder disease than influenza A viruses. In the remaining 11 countries the consultation rates were lower to much lower than in the winter 2004-2005. The highest consultation rates were usually observed among children aged 0-14. The circulating influenza virus types and subtypes were distributed heterogeneously across Europe. Although the figures for total virus detections in Europe indicated a predominance of influenza B virus (58% of all virus detections), in many countries influenza B virus was predominant only early in the winter, whilst later there was a marked increase in influenza A virus detections. Among the countries where influenza A viruses were co-dominant with B viruses (9/29) or were predominant (4/29), the dominant influenza A subtype was H3 in seven countries and H1 in four countries. The vast majority of characterised influenza B viruses (90%) were similar to the B/Victoria/2/87 lineage of influenza B viruses that re-emerged in Europe in the winter 2004-2005 but were not included in the vaccine for the influenza season 2005-2006. This might help to explain the dominance of influenza B viruses in many countries in Europe during the winter 2005-2006. The influenza A(H3) and A(H1) viruses were similar to the reference strains included in the 2005-2006 vaccine, A/California/7/2004 (H3N2) and A/New Caledonia/20/99 (H1N1), respectively. In conclusion, the 2005-2006 influenza epidemic in Europe was characterised by moderate clinical activity, a heterogeneous spread pattern across Europe, and a variable virus dominance by country, although an overall dominance of influenza B viruses that did not match the virus strain included in the vaccine was observed.
Publisher
European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC)
Subject
Virology,Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health,Epidemiology
Cited by
15 articles.
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