Seropositivity for Influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 Virus among Frontline Health Care Personnel

Abstract

Seroprevalence of antibodies to influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 virus among 193 emergency department health care personnel was similar among 147 non–health care personnel (odds ratio 1.4, 95% CI 0.8–2.4). Working in an acute care setting did not substantially increase risk for virus infection above risk conferred by community-based exposures.

Pandemic influenza A(H1N1)pdm09: risk of infection in primary healthcare workers

“…A study comparing seropositivity among emergency department healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers in New York found seroprevalence of 21% among healthcare workers, and no difference in seroprevalence was detected between healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers. 30 An Australian study similarly found no difference in seroprevalence between clinical and non-clinical tertiary hospital employees; 31 and a Hong Kong study found no difference in seroprevalence between hospital staff and communitybased blood donors. 32 A study of healthcare workers and managers in Scottish hospitals found an influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 seroprevalence of 10.3% at the pandemic peak.…”

The Occupational Risk of Influenza A (H1N1) Infection among Healthcare Personnel during the 2009 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies

“…soldiers; RR = 0.26, CI = 0.07 to 0.46) [23]. Six high quality studies [32][33][34][35][36][37] and one moderate quality study [43] showed no significantly higher or lower risk of influenza A (H1N1) infection for HCP in comparison with non-HCP.…”

“…Prevalence rates among controls/comparisons ranged between 1.0% and 30.0%. Nine high quality [16,26,[29][30][31][33][34][35]37] and two moderate quality [38,39] studies showed higher H1N1 prevalence rates for HCP compared to controls/comparisons. Based on the eight quality criteria, fourteen studies (70%) were of high quality (!…”

“…Eight of the twenty studies (40%) completed a confirmatory test [16,23,24,[29][30][31][32][33]. Almost all studies (n = 19) used blood samples as influenza A (H1N1) diagnostic method [16,[19][20][21][23][24][25][26][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38]. Six studies (30%) used nasopharyngeal swabs as additional diagnostic method [20,21,24,28,36,37].…”

“…Based on the eight quality criteria, fourteen studies (70%) were of high quality (! 10 points) [16,21,23,24,26,[29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]40,41] and six studies (30%) of moderate quality (! 5 points) [19,20,25,28,38,39].…”