Topical Issues

Have I had the flu?

By now lots of us will have had one or two winter colds; some of these caused by the influenza virus. There are several other viruses that cause similar symptoms: muscle aches, fever, headache, blocked nose, sore throat and cough.

It is difficult to tell which virus has caused your illness, so doctors use the term “flu-like illness” to describe this set of symptoms. The Royal College of General Practitioners keeps a database of GP consultations for flu-like illness, and the Health Protection Agency at Collindale take samples from some patients to identify the prevalence of influenza.

Every year the numbers of flu and flu-like-illnesses rise from October to April in the UK. This year’s outbreak is caused by a strain of the influenza virus that originated six months ago in Brisbane, Australia, and has formed the genetic basis of this winter’s flu vaccine.

Flu reaches epidemic proportions when the number of GP consultations for flu-like-illness exceeds 200 per 100,000 people per week. This winter the consultation rates peaked the week before Christmas at 60 per 100,000 and are now declining. The last epidemic in the UK was in the winter of 1999/2000. The last flu pandemic (global epidemic) was in 1968, in which an estimated 4 million people died of complications of influenza.

Treatment
The treatment for flu and flu-like-illness is to take paracetamol or ibuprofen for the relief of symptoms, to drink plenty to avoid dehydration and to rest until the symptoms have abated; a process which usually takes one to two weeks. Antibiotics don’t help. The condition is highly infectious. In the elderly and people with chronic diseases the commonest complication is a secondary chest infection, so people in these risk groups who develop breathing difficulty should see their GP, especially if they haven’t been vaccinated.