Poultry contact, chronic illness cited as H7N9 risk factors

From Lisa Schnirring at CIDRAP :

" A study designed to sift out some of the risk factors for H7N9 influenza in China found that exposure to live poultry and their environments were the main drivers, as well as having some types of chronic illness, researchers reported yesterday.

The group, from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and provincial centers, focused their study on H7N9 patients from Jiangsu province, and they surveyed controls to identify features that did and didn't associate with infection risk. They published their findings in Eurosurveillance.

Jiangsu province had 27 cases as of May 27, but researchers excluded 2 of them, because one involved human-to-human transmission and data were missing for the other. Eight of the cases were fatal. The study included 93 controls that were matched by age, sex, and location.

Researchers conducted the survey between Apr 25 and May 12. It included questions about health status, daily habits, and activity and environmental exposures within 2 weeks of case illness onsets. Questions about poultry exposure asked about direct contact at markets, home, or work.

Patient ages ranged from 21 to 85, with 12 of them older than 60. Nineteen of the patients were men."