Burden of influenza‐associated deaths in the Americas, 2002–2008

Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses

Po-Yung Cheng²  Rakhee Palekar²  Eduardo Azziz-Baumgartner²  Danielle Iuliano²  Airlane P. Alencar¹  Joseph Bresee²  Otavio Oliva³  Maria de Fatima Marinho de Souza³ 

[1] Institute of Mathematics and Statistics, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil;Influenza Division, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA;Pan American Health Organization, Washington, DC, USA

关键词: Americas;    influenza;    model;    mortality;   

DOI  :  10.1111/irv.12317

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

Abstract

Background

Influenza disease is a vaccine-preventable cause of morbidity and mortality. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) region has invested in influenza vaccines, but few estimates of influenza burden exist to justify these investments. We estimated influenza-associated deaths for 35 PAHO countries during 2002–2008.

Methods

Annually, PAHO countries report registered deaths. We used respiratory and circulatory (R&C) codes from seven countries with distinct influenza seasonality and high-quality mortality data to estimate influenza-associated mortality rates by age group (0–64, 65–74, and ≥75 years) with a Serfling regression model or a negative binomial model. We calculated the percent of all R&C deaths attributable to influenza by age group in these countries (etiologic fraction) and applied it to the age-specific mortality in 13 countries with good mortality data but poorly defined seasonality. Lastly, we grouped the remaining 15 countries into WHO mortality strata and applied the age and mortality stratum-specific rate of influenza mortality calculated from the 20 countries. We summed each country's estimate to arrive at an average total annual number and rate of influenza deaths in the Americas.

Results

For the 35 PAHO countries, we estimated an annual mean influenza-associated mortality rate of 2·1/100 000 among <65-year olds, 31·9/100 000 among those 65–74 years, and 161·8/100 000 among those ≥75 years. We estimated that annually between 40 880 and 160 270 persons (mean, 85 100) die of influenza illness in the PAHO region.

Conclusion

Influenza remains an important cause of mortality in the Americas.

【 授权许可】

CC BY-NC   
© 2015 The Authors. Influenza and Other Respiratory Viruses Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.