Is Cytomegalovirus Involved in Recurring Periods of Higher than Expected Death and Medical Admissions, Occurring as Clustered Outbreaks in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres?

Abstract

A series of clustered infectious-like events have been recently documented in both the northern hemisphere (Canada, UK [England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales], all countries in the European Union, and the USA) and the southern hemisphere (Australia and New Zealand), in which both deaths and emergency admissions for a range of medical conditions appear to simultaneously rise in a step-like manner, stay high for a period of 12 to 18 months, and then revert back to the expected time trajectory. These unique events are also observed in very small geographical areas within the population area of a single hospital or Primary Care Organisation (PCO), and this precludes explanations based on acute thresholds to admission or to PCO funding, procedures and practice. These events have been overlooked by traditional health surveillance methodologies, simply because it was assumed that neither deaths nor medical admissions could behave in this unique way. Indeed, in the UK it has been widely assumed that the increases in medical admissions arising from these events are solely due to deficiencies in the organization and delivery of health and social care, often labelled as 'failure to manage demand'. Based on the spectrum of medical conditions which are associated with the increased admissions

Outbreaks of a presumed infectious pathogen creating on/off switching in deaths

“…This explains why this author is the only person currently investigating these outbreaks. Given the range of conditions/diagnoses which show an increase during these outbreaks the immune modifying herpes virus, cytomegalovirus (CMV) has been circumstantially implicated [18][19]. However, this remains to be established conclusively.…”

Essays on rising mortality in England and Wales – a MEDLINE search is not infallible

“…These same curious events affecting deaths have been documented in all European Union countries, Australia, New Zealand, Arizona (USA). 3,4 The impact of these events on Alzheimer and dementia deaths has also been the subject of several studies. The devil lies hidden in the detail of very small area movement at sub-local authority level.…”

“…1,2 It is unfortunate that their literature search (based on MEDLINE) has omitted to detect a large body of work investigating anomalous trends in death over many years, and across multiple countries. [3][4][5] It is always essential that authors conduct literature searches using both MEDLINE and CINAHL. With the plethora of new entrant journals, it is nowadays essential that a Google Scholar search also be conducted.…”

Bed occupancy and hospital mortality

“…We are therefore left with the original proposal that sudden and large step-increases in all-cause mortality act via their effect on emergency medical admissions (Jones 2015(Jones , 2016b to increase average occupancy. The increased occupancy resulting from whatever is causing the increase in deaths and admissions will only make a tiny contribution to in-hospital deaths and thus to all-cause mortality.…”

“…The increased occupancy resulting from whatever is causing the increase in deaths and admissions will only make a tiny contribution to in-hospital deaths and thus to all-cause mortality. The focus therefore needs to be on the presumed infectious agent capable of inducing such large and sudden increases in death and hospital admissions (Jones 2015(Jones , 2016b.…”