Asymptomatic Viral Shedding Influenza
Testing of asymptomatic individuals during this 3 month period is complicated by the fact that some people have detectable virus from their prior infection during this period.
Asymptomatic viral shedding influenza. It is widely believed that asymptomatic cases and asymptomatic infections do occur regularly in both seasonal and pandemic influenza and is an important aspect of the epidemiology of influenza including the past 2009 pandemic h1n1 influenza ph1n1. A positive test during this period may more likely result from a prior infection rather than a new infection that poses risk for transmission. We identified 235 virologically confirmed secondary cases of influenza virus infection in the household setting including 31 13 paucisymptomatic and 25 11 asymptomatic cases. Influenza is caused by different strains of influenza viruses.
14 we found a similar proportion of asymptomatic cases for ph1n1 12 as observed in the suess study. The ability to spread influenza viruses and infect others is usually equated to how much influenza virus is shed by an infected person 1. The mean levels of influenza viral rna shedding in asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic cases were approximately 1 2 log 10 copies lower than in symptomatic cases. Only 14 of infections with detectable shedding at rt pcr were asymptomatic and viral shedding was low in these cases.
Reported that the proportion of asymptomatic cases was 18 for seasonal h3n2 12 for ph1n1 and 14 for all influenza subtypes combined. The duration of viral rna shedding was shorter and declined more rapidly in paucisymptomatic and asymptomatic than in symptomatic cases. However asymptomatic cases had shorter shedding duration for all influenza subtypes combined. The mean levels of influenza viral rna shedding in asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic cases were approximately 1 2 log10 copies lower than in symptomatic cases.
Influenza transmission by infected but asymptomatic people. With influenza they added persons with asymptomatic disease generally have lower quantitative viral loads in secretions from the upper respiratory tract than from the lower respiratory tract and. Exposure to influenza virus can lead to infection but not every infected person will have symptoms or feel unwell 1 7. Most viral shedding occurred during the first 2 3 days after illness onset and we estimated that 1 8 of infectiousness occurs prior to illness onset.