How not to catch flu

As Louis Pasteur, the father of vaccination, purportedly said on his death bed: It’s the field, not the virus.  In other words, people with strong immune diseases are unlikely to get infected.

Researchers have put the idea to the test—and found that he was right,

Eleven healthy volunteers spent two weeks living closely with five flu sufferers—and none caught the virus.

Researchers at the University of Maryland put it down to good ventilation, which also reduced coughing by the sick participants—but the overall health and wellbeing of the volunteers clearly played a part.

For the experiment, the healthy volunteers and the flu sufferers spent two weeks together in hotel rooms in Baltimore, where they carried out normal activities, such as conversations and physical exercise, and the infected also handled items like pens and computers, which the healthy also used.

Researchers closely tracked symptoms and collected daily nasal swabs, saliva samples, and blood samples to monitor infection and antibody development.

Despite living so closely together, the healthy volunteers didn’t get infected.  “At this time of year, it seems like everyone is catching the flu virus. And yet our study showed no transmission—what does this say about how flu spreads and how to stop outbreaks?” said Dr Donald Milton, one of the researchers.

And spread it does.  Up to 1 billion people globally have been infected with one of the four major strains of seasonal flu this year, and in the US alone there have been at least 7.5 million cases, leading to 81,000 hospitalizations and more than 3,000 deaths.

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