Kan olika virussjukdomar blockera varandra? En studie baserad på övervakningsdata
Background: Infectious Diseases Institute points out that the potential of various viraldiseases possibly can block each other. It is said that the virus that causes common cold,Rhinovirus, may have saved many people from the flu. If this assumption proves true, itwould explain why some viral diseases in some countries have been slow to take off and pointto a new way to struggle influenza. Objective: The main purpose of this study, based onreported cases of RSV and influenza type A, type B and H1N1, investigate whether viraldiseases can block each other, i.e. difficult season of flu may delay and / or mitigate thespread of RSV in Sweden. Method: Composing descriptive data to illustrate to what extentthe various viral infections, RSV and influenza virus types, affect each other. It has been usedstatistical correlation analysis to estimate and test the degree of impact. Results: Correlationanalysis for RSV and influenza A was found to be negative but not statistically significant.However, it?s still quite high for a possible block between RSV and influenza A. For RSV andInfluenza B correlation was positive but not statistically significant. The correlation betweenRSV and the total flu were negative but not statistically significant. On the contrary, thecorrelation between RSV and H1N1 was negative and statistically significant. Discussion:The results for RSV and influenza A shows that the seasons when there is a large outbreak ofinfluenza A, RSV comes afterwards and is milder and when RSV season is severe it will beinverted. The same trend is also present in the time series graph from the Infectious DiseasesInstitute. One possible explanation for why there was a positive correlation between RSV andinfluenza B could be that influenza B coincides with RSV at the same time almost in everyseason. The outcome of RSV and the total flu were negative but not statisticallysignificant.This may be due to influenza A and B integrated different with RSV. Thecorrelation between RSV and H1N1 was significantly negative and could indicate that H1N1outbreak occurred at a different time than RSV, which may be a coincidence and do notnecessarily indicate that one of the other protected.