Studies on the United States have shown that children born in 1919-and thus exposed to the H1N1 virus in utero-experienced worse health (Almond and Mazumder 2005) and higher mortality in older ages (Fletcher 2018 Mazumder et al. The 1918 influenza pandemic has been used as a quasi-experiment in several previous studies to analyze the causal effects of a fetal insult. This article examines the long-term consequences of fetal exposure to the 1918 influenza pandemic, using uniquely detailed Swedish longitudinal individual-level data for the period 1968–2012, allowing for the examination of a range of health and socioeconomic outcomes. The fears were linked both to its potentially huge immediate effects in terms of deaths and to the possible long-lasting consequences among those surviving the disease, including those exposed in utero. As a result, governments across the world invested in vaccination campaigns and issued guidelines to limit the consequences of a pandemic. Recalling its massive death toll, reported by some sources to have been at least 50 million individuals (Institute of Medicine 2005), the world in 2009 again braced for the impact of an influenza pandemic with considerable similarities to the Spanish flu, both resulting from an antigenic shift in the H1N1 virus. On the centennial anniversary of the 1918 influenza pandemic, commonly known as the Spanish flu, its relevance among the public and the scientific community is still high. We conclude that although the immediate health effects of exposure to the 1918 pandemic were huge, the long-term effects were modest in size. For socioeconomic outcomes, results fail to provide consistent evidence supporting any long-term consequences of fetal exposure. Overall, the effects on all-cause mortality were modest, with about three months shorter remaining life expectancy for the cohorts exposed during the second trimester. For males, exposure during the second trimester also affected mortality in cancer and heart disease. For both men and women, fetal exposure resulted in higher morbidity in ages 54–87, as measured by hospitalization. This study combines several sources of contemporary statistics with full-population individual-level data for Sweden during 1968–2012 to examine the influence of fetal exposure to the Spanish flu on health, adulthood income, and occupational attainment. Several studies have shown that children born in 1919, and thus exposed to the H1N1 virus in utero, experienced worse health and socioeconomic outcomes in older ages than surrounding birth cohorts.
The 1918 influenza pandemic had not only a massive instant death toll but also lasting effects on its survivors.
0 kommentar(er)
