Summary
Influenza viruses cause much winter-time morbidity and death in temperate regions.
We still do not understand why 'flu is more common in winter. Since the 1960s, investigators
have studied the role of relative humidity and temperature on viral survival, transmission
and infection rates but results have demonstrated only inconclusive trends. Over the
past few years however, a series of exciting studies have instead focussed on absolute
humidity and demonstrated highly significant correlations with viral survival and
transmission rates in both laboratory and epidemiological models. Here we review the
evidence for a causal association between absolute humidity and 'flu transmission
and outline how this could lead to a new approach to curbing this and perhaps other
viral epidemics in the winter months.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: April 24, 2015
Accepted:
April 21,
2015
Identification
Copyright
© 2015 Published by Elsevier Inc.
