Avoid children to avoid flu - study
|Published
'It shows that schools really are a hotbed of transmission.' 'It shows that schools really are a hotbed of transmission.'
London - Avoiding public transport during the flu season in a bid to stay healthy is a waste of time, according to scientists.
Instead, they say, it is your children you should be wary of because seasonal infections are most likely to come from the playground.
The survey by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found a peak of reported flu-like symptoms in children just before the Christmas break, with a quarter feeling unwell.
By the following week – when the schools were closed – the rate of infection among children had more than halved, falling to 12 percent.
But the highest levels of illness in adults came in that week, suggesting a link between bugs travelling from school to the family home.
The findings may also explain why women, who tend to be responsible for the lion’s share of childcare, are more likely to fall ill with flu during the winter months.
Almost half of them reported flu-like symptoms at some point during the study, compared with a third of men.
And on an average week, 6.9 percent of women were unwell, against 4.6 percent of men – bashing the myth of man flu.
Dr Alma Adler, a research fellow at LSHTM, said: “It shows that schools really are a hotbed of transmission. If there is a public health message from this research, it is to keep your children out of school as soon as they start feeling ill to prevent them spreading their bug to their schoolmates.”
She said there was no significant difference in the prevalence of flu for people who used public transport, and those that did not.
Speaking at the Cheltenham Science Festival,she said: “You can completely discount the age old myth that taking public transport leaves you exposed to a whole host of infectious illnesses.
“The findings will no doubt come as a huge surprise to the many workers who blame being under the weather on their daily commute.
“If you are on the train or on public transport, it is not very likely that another commuter will sneeze in your face.
“For a disease to be spread, being in all ill person’s presence is not enough.
“Ideally there needs to be close contact and some sort of exchange of fluids.”
Over the entire survey, the average incidence of illness was six percent on an average week, and around 46 percent of the participants had flu-like symptoms at least once during the duration of the research.
But London had a 15 percent lower than average number of cases. Considering many in the capital use public transport on a daily basis, the results suggest illnesses such as flu and colds are not spread this way.
“If public transport helped spread infection, you would expect a city like London to have a much higher rate of flu. Instead we found that rates were similar in both urban and rural areas, and that is replicated in European research as well.”
Scientists from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) asked almost 6 000 people to record whether or not they felt unwell every seven days during a 22-week period from November to April.
Their answers were then compared to their lifestyle and background.
The research will go some way to reassuring commuters that public transport is not a source of cold and flus, as those who travelled by bus or train were actually nine percent less likely to report an illness. - Daily Mail