The effectiveness of pandemic flu vaccination campaigns -- like that now underway for H1N1 -- could be undermined by the public incorrectly associating coincidental and unrelated health events with the vaccines.

This is the conclusion of a paper published online Oct. 31 by the Lancet and authored by an international team of investigators led by Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

"Regardless of whether someone gets the vaccine, bad things happen to people every day and generally occur at fairly predictable rates," said Steven Black, M.D., lead author and a physician in the Center for Global Health and Division of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children's. "Identifying real safety concerns with new vaccines means we have to untangle actual safety signals from background medical events, which are those that would happen without vaccination."

A “perplexing” Canadian study linking H1N1 to seasonal flu shots is throwing national influenza plans into disarray and testing public faith in the government agencies responsible for protecting the nation's health.

Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.

The paper is under peer review, and lead researchers Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University must stay mum until it's published.

Met with intense early skepticism both in Canada and abroad, the paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning.

Last night Zero Hedge obtained some interesting documents from the CDC web site. They contain blank 'forced quarantine' orders from Iowa and Florida regarding novel H1N1 -- including quarantine to a 'secure detention center'-- which appear to be recent -- dated April 2009. Some may be aware the NIH and CDC just held an H1N1 conference in DC -- August 19-21 2009 -- that focused on 'mass fatality management'. For many, this should be cause for concern. As is becoming clear, our government is quite corrupt. The idea that this same government is now preparing for forced quarantine and mass vaccination should make anyone who has been following recent events shudder. There is something going on here, but governments have not come clean with the public. Why 'secure detention centers' in the U.S. and 'secure vaccination centers' in France if there is nothing to be concerned about?

Five flavonols (3, 5, and 9-11) were isolated from Rhodiola rosea, and compared with commercially available flavonoids (1, 2, 4, 6-8, and 12-14) to facilitate analysis of their structure-activity relationship (SAR). All compounds (1-14) showed neuraminidase inhibitory activities with IC(50) values ranging from 0.8 to 56.9muM. The in vitro anti-influenza virus activities of flavonoids 1-6, 8-12, and 14 were evaluated using two influenza viral strains, H1N1 (A/PR/8/34) and H9N2 (A/Chicken/Korea/MS96/96), testing their ability to reduce virus-induced cytopathic effect (CPE) in MDCK cells. We found that the activity of these compounds ranged from 30.2 to 99.1muM against H1N1- and 18.5 to 133.6muM against H9N2-induced CPE. Of compounds 1-14, gossypetin (6) exhibited the most potent inhibitory activity, with IC(50) values of 0.8 and 2.6muM on neuraminidases from Clostridium perfringens and recombinant influenza virus A (rvH1N1), respectively.

A ionization technique in mass spectrometry called Direct Analysis in Real Time Mass Spectrometry (DART TOF-MS) coupled with a Direct Binding Assay was used to identify and characterize anti-viral components of an elderberry fruit (Sambucus nigra L.) extract without either derivatization or separation by standard chromatographic techniques. The elderberry extract inhibited Human Influenza A (H1N1) infection in vitro with an IC(50) value of 252+/-34mug/mL. The Direct Binding Assay established that flavonoids from the elderberry extract bind to H1N1 virions and, when bound, block the ability of the viruses to infect host cells. Two compounds were identified, 5,7,3',4'-tetra-O-methylquercetin (1) and 5,7-dihydroxy-4-oxo-2-(3,4,5-trihydroxyphenyl)chroman-3-yl-3,4,5-trihydroxycyclohexanecarboxylate (2), as H1N1-bound chemical species. Compound 1 and dihydromyricetin (3), the corresponding 3-hydroxyflavonone of 2, were synthesized and shown to inhibit H1N1 infection in vitro by binding to H1N1 virions, blocking host cell entry and/or recognition.

Few people changed their behaviour in the early stages of the swine flu outbreak, finds a study published on the British Medical Journal website. But the results do support efforts to inform the public about specific actions that can reduce the risks from swine flu and to communicate about the government's plans and resources.

Encouraging the public to undertake specific behaviours related to hygiene has proved useful in containing previous outbreaks of infectious disease, but motivating the public to adopt such behaviours can be difficult.

So researchers at Institute of Psychiatry King's College London and the Health Protection Agency set out to assess whether perceptions of the swine flu outbreak predicted changes in behaviour among members of the public England Scotland and Wales.

They conducted a telephone survey of 997 adults between 8 and 12 May 2009. Participants were asked nine questions about recent behaviours.

Preliminary information important for understanding the evolving situation 24 JULY 2009 | GENEVA -- The number of human cases of pandemic (H1N1) 2009 is still increasing substantially in many countries, even in countries that have already been affected for some time.Our understanding of the disease continues to evolve as new countries become affected, as community-level spread extends in already affected countries, and as information is shared globally. Many countries with widespread community transmission have moved to testing only samples of ill persons and have shifted surveillance efforts to monitoring and reporting of trends. This shift has been recommended by WHO, because as the pandemic progresses, monitoring trends in disease activity can be done better by following trends in illness cases rather than trying to test all ill persons, which can severely stress national resources.

Energy restriction (ER) without malnutrition extends lifespan in mice and postpones age-related changes in immunity. However, we have previously shown that aged (22 mo old) ER mice exhibit increased mortality, impaired viral clearance, and reduced natural killer (NK) cell cytotoxicity following influenza infection compared with aged mice that consumed food ad libitum (AL). To determine whether the detrimental effects of ER in response to influenza infection occur independently of advanced age, young adult (6 mo) male C57BL/6 mice consuming an AL or ER diet were infected with influenza A virus (H1N1, PR8). Young adult ER mice exhibited increased mortality (P < 0.05) and weight loss (P < 0.01) in response to infection. ER mice exhibited decreased total (P < 0.001) and NK1.1+ lymphocytes (P < 0.05) in lung and reduced influenza-induced NK cell cytotoxicity in both lung (P < 0.01) and spleen (P < 0.05).

AIM: The immune response to influenza vaccine is attenuated in elderly persons, though they are at greatest risk for morbidity and mortality by influenza virus infection. Experimental studies demonstrate that co-administration of l-cystine and l-theanine enhanced antigen-specific production of immunoglobulin in aged mice infected with influenza virus. We thus investigated the effect of l-cystine and l-theanine on antibody induction by influenza vaccines in elderly persons. METHODS: Residents in a nursing home were randomly allocated to l-cystine and l-theanine (n = 32) or placebo (n = 33). The test substances were administered p.o. for 14 days before immunization. Serum influenza virus antibody titers were measured before and 4 weeks after vaccination. RESULTS: Vaccination significantly elevated hemagglutination inhibition (HI) titers for all the three strains of influenza viruses (A/New Caledonia [H1N1], A/New York [H3N2] and B/Shanghai) in both groups. HI titers after vaccination were not significantly different between the two groups for either strain.

For the purposes of inhibiting ACE and reducing cytokines, the following foods and compounds seem to be the best choices:

• Green tea (ACE inhibitor, reduces cytokines)
• Black tea (ACE inhibitor, reduces cytokines)
• Quercetin (possible ACE inhibitor, reduces cytokines)
• Pomegranate juice (ACE inhibitor)
• Red wine (ACE inhibitor)
• Turmeric (reduces cytokines)
• Black pepper (reduces cytokines)
• Raw crushed garlic (reduces cytokines)
• Red palm oil (reduces cytokines)
• Vitamin E (reduces cytokines)
• Coconut oil (reduces cytokines)

The following foods, while beneficial in many other ways, may not be a good idea in terms of reducing cytokine levels:

• Olive oil (may increase cytokines)
• Fish oil (may increase cytokines)
• Chocolate (ACE inhibitor, increases cytokines)

In addition, it seems that vitamin D3 could be on either list, depending on the dosage. Average blood levels of vitamin D may be worse than very low or high levels.

Joshua Hamilton, the MBL's Chief Academic and Scientific Officer and a senior scientist in the MBL's Bay Paul Center; graduate student Courtney Kozul of Dartmouth Medical School, where the work was conducted; and their colleagues report their findings in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

"When a normal person or mouse is infected with the flu, they immediately develop an immune response," says Hamilton, in which immune cells rush to the lungs and produce chemicals that help fight the infection. However, in mice that had ingested 100 ppb (parts per billion) arsenic in their drinking water for five weeks, the immune response to H1N1 infection was initially feeble, and when a response finally did kick in days later, it was "too robust and too late," Hamilton says. "There was a massive infiltration of immune cells to the lungs and a massive inflammatory response, which led to bleeding and damage in the lung." Morbidity over the course of the infection was significantly higher for the arsenic-exposed animals than the normal animals.

Judging from what we know about vitamin D, it is highly probable that it confers substantial protection from viral infections, including swine flu.

Dr. John Cannell of the Vitamin D Council (www.vitamindcouncil.com) first connected the dots, identifying the possibility of an influence of vitamin D on incidence of flu.

In 2006, Dr. Cannell reports noticing that the patients in his psychiatric ward in northern California were completely spared from the influenza epidemic of that year, while plenty of patients in adjacent wards were coming down with flu. Dr. Cannell proposed that the apparent immunity to flu in his patients may have been due to the modest dose of 2000 units vitamin D per day he had prescribed that the patients in other wards had not been given. (Since the hospital was run by the state of California, Dr. Cannell apparently had only so much leeway with vitamin D dosing.) While it’s not proof, it’s nonetheless a fascinating and compelling observation.