Swine flu spread boy-to-boy and girl-to-girl, in public school

Scientists have discovered that the swine flu was transmitted to the same gender at three times the rate of opposite gender infections, according to a story in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel (http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/115036389.html).

"Researchers in the U.S. and England are reporting that in the 2009 swine flu pandemic, boys most often infected other boys, while girls tended to infect other girls.

The study examining how swine flu spread in an elementary school was conducted by scientists at Imperial College London, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Pennsylvania Department of Health and appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers looked at how social networks influenced the way in which the H1N1 pandemic spread through an elementary school in Pennsylvania. Their findings could help health officials plan responses to future epidemics.

The scientists found that children were three times more likely to transmit the flu to children of the same gender than to children of the opposite gender. They also found that the rate of flu transmission was five times higher between children in the same class than it was between children in the same grade but different classes. The rate of transmission was 25 times high between children in the same class than between children in different grades.

However, the scientists found that a child's risk of catching the flu did not rise significantly when he or she sat next to a child with the flu.

In all, 370 children were involved in the study. They attended a school that closed 18 days after the swine flu outbreak began. At the time, 27% of the students were showing symptoms.

"The data from this study will help us make more accurate models, which can help public health officials to handle epidemics effectively," said Simon Cauchemez, who works at Imperial College London and led the study. "For example, these new models could help us better understand whether and when it would be appropriate to close a school, or whether it might be better to close individual classes or grades.""

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