GENEVA — Kane County officials say the H1N1 influenza strain will come on top of the regular seasonal flu and that county residents should be prepared for the effects of both.

Kane County has begun a campaign to inform people about the dangers of the influenza strain and to vaccinate residents, said Paul Keuhnert, executive director for the county health department.

“I think this is something that is going to be a standing item on our agenda … through the fall,” Keuhnert told the county board’s public heath committee Tuesday.

In addition to maintaining contact with state and federal health officials, the county’s information campaign will focus on explaining how to prevent the spread of the flu and coordinate the distribution of the vaccine.

But it remained uncertain when the vaccine will be in the hands of Kane County health officials.

“As of today (Tuesday), we don’t have an exact date of when we’ll be receiving the vaccine,” Keuhnert said.

He said he believes it will be available in the county after mid-to-late October.

When it finally is available, Keuhnert said, it will be safe to get both the regular flu shot and the H1N1 vaccine.

In Kane County, about 80 seasonal flu deaths and an estimated 1,500 hospitalizations for the flu are reported every year. Eight percent of emergency room visits are because of the flu.

This particular strain already has reached pandemic level, with widespread infection in almost half of the U.S, Keuhnert said. The overwhelming number of flu tests have come back as the H1N1 virus.

“It’s not just ‘the flu,’ ” Keuhnert warned. “It’s something that is costly and is largely preventable.”

Unlike the typical flu, this strain affects the younger population more often than other adults. The county’s vaccine distribution efforts will target pregnant women, those under the age of 24, people with infants less than 6 months old, those ages 25 to 64 with medical conditions that make them susceptible to the flu, and health care and emergency personnel.

The effects of the virus can spread beyond just illness.

Large numbers of people getting sick from the flu can hurt the local economy, said Gerald Jones, chairman of the public health committee.

Keuhnert said costs for hospitalizations for an otherwise preventable flu illness can reach into the millions.

“It fills up the ERs,” said board member John Mayer, R-West Dundee. “It’s like ripples in the water. It runs across the county.”

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

LONDON — Heart patients who catch the flu may have more to worry about than just a fever or the sniffles: the virus could also spark a heart attack, new research shows.

Amid the global outbreak of swine flu, experts say it’s crucial that heart patients get vaccinated against both regular flu and swine flu to avoid medical problems. Doctors said swine flu isn’t any more dangerous than regular flu, but it’s important for heart patients to get vaccinated because more flu viruses will be circulating this year.

British researchers analyzed 39 previous studies of heart patients and found a consistent link between flu and heart attacks. Up to half of all unexpected flu deaths were due to heart disease, the researchers found.

The study was published online Tuesday in the British medical journal, The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

“The message here is so strong and so logical that it’s hard for us to ignore,” said Dr. Ralph Brindis, vice president of the American College of Cardiology. “If we can convince cardiac patients to get a flu vaccine, that could ultimately save lives.”

Only about one-third of heart patients in the U.S. regularly get vaccinated.

Doctors have long known that flu viruses can worsen existing medical conditions and that heart patients are especially vulnerable during flu pandemics. Flu viruses cause inflammation in the body, usually in the lungs. But they can also cause swelling in the heart itself or in the coronary arteries, which could lead to dangerous clots breaking off and causing a heart attack.

Once heart patients get the flu, they are also more vulnerable to complications like pneumonia and other infections.

“We know influenza vaccine is effective in preventing influenza and therefore in theory, ought to be effective in preventing the complications of influenza,” said Andrew Hayward of University College London, one of the study authors. He said two of the studies analyzed showed heart patients who got a flu shot had fewer heart attacks than those who didn’t.

Hayward said flu viruses might merely act as triggers for heart attacks in cardiovascular patients.

“Influenza may be bringing forward an event that might have happened anyway,” he said, adding there is evidence that when the virus peaks, so too do heart attacks.

Experts are unsure whether the study results apply to otherwise healthy people with no history of heart disease. But they say flu viruses could potentially trigger heart attacks in people with no apparent heart disease, if they have risk factors like high blood pressure or are overweight.

For heart patients, doctors said the evidence is clear.

“Flu has too often been off the radar screen,” said Dr. Harlan Krumholz, a spokesman for the American Heart Association and professor of medicine at Yale University. “But flu is as important to think about as cholesterol or blood pressure.”

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

WASHINGTON — Coughed on by somebody with the flu? Duke University researchers are developing a test to determine – with a mere drop of blood – who will get sick before the sniffling and fever set in. And they’re turning to hundreds of dorm-dwelling freshmen this fall to see if it works.

It’s a novel experiment: Students report daily whether they have any cold or flu symptoms. If they do, a team swoops in to test not just the sneezer but, more importantly, seemingly healthy friends and hallmates who might be incubating the infection.

“We’re redefining the definition of being ill,” says Col. Geoffrey Ling, a physician with the Defense Research Projects Agency, the Defense Department’s research arm, which came up with the idea.

The reason: The military faces huge problems when flu or other viruses sweep through crowded barracks, and knowing an outbreak was brewing could allow them to separate and protect those not infected. We’re not just talking about the challenge of replacing fevered soldiers on the day’s patrol. Your body may be slowing down even before that fever erupts, as it tries to fight off a brewing virus.

And flu is contagious up to 24 hours before people show symptoms, one of the insidious ways that it spreads.

“If you’ve got a group of people living together and you can identify who’s likely to become sick, you can much more efficiently use whatever your intervention is – a vaccine, an antiviral – to prevent disease,” explains Duke infectious disease specialist Dr. Christopher Woods.

Respiratory viruses sweep through crowded college dorms just as easily as military squads, and with the new swine flu – the 2009 H1N1 strain – targeting mostly the young, Duke scientists may learn sooner than they had hoped just how well their experimental test really works.

It’s based on a simple principle: Your immune system revs up to fight infection long before you show symptoms or before today’s tests could detect the actual virus in your body. The Duke team discovered a so-called genomic fingerprint, a pattern of subtle molecular changes as genes are activated to fight viral respiratory infections.

Working with colleagues at the University of Virginia and in London, the Duke team first dripped various viruses into the noses of healthy volunteers. The people were quarantined, and scientists collected daily blood, saliva and nasal-fluid samples. Sure enough, they spotted the RNA-based fingerprint that separated who got sick from who didn’t, in a few cases just hours after the person was exposed.

But does it work in the real world?

Armed with a $19.5 million Defense grant, Duke is trying to find out – and to create an easy-to-use test kit that could read a blood drop in minutes and signal with, say, a color change who’s going to get sick.

“A vision for this would be similar to a diabetic who pricks their finger every day,” says project leader Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, director of Duke’s Center for Genomic Medicine. “The science will tell us what the limitations will be.”

Enter the Duke dorm study. It’s enrolling up to 800 students who agree to log onto a Web site every day and report if they have any cold- or flu-like symptoms.

Researchers signed up Sean Cadley, a freshman from New York City, when she walked by them already hacking. She admits being enticed in part by $75 in compensation for the pokes and prods of testing.

“I’m getting something out of being sick, which is always nice,” said Cadley, a sharp cough still punctuating every few sentences nearly two weeks later.

Cadley, 18, thought nothing of the bug at first, but a fever of 103 hit a few days after the cough and she says she didn’t leave her room for two days. Researchers won’t say if it was the flu or another virus. But they quickly e-mailed her dorm-mates to say someone in the building was sick, and Cadley’s friends raced to volunteer for up to five days of tests – pocketing $150 apiece – to see if they, too, would fall ill.

Beyond the pre-symptom test, the dorm study could shed crucial new light on how flu ripples through communities. Using sophisticated mapping techniques, researchers will tease out social aspects of infection – how close you must be to the sick to catch their bug, for example. And they may identify hot spots of transmission where they can warn students to take extra precautions.

If the study pans out, the Defense agency’s Ling hopes to seek Food and Drug Administration approval for a pre-symptom test within two years, aimed at crowded quarters like the military, colleges, nursing homes, even hospital intensive care units.

To Ginsburg, the work is only the beginning. He envisions catching deadly bacterial or fungal infections far earlier in vulnerable people like organ transplant recipients, or even a day when there’s a treatment for the common cold – should you detect it early enough.

“Infectious disease is ripe for this,” Ginsburg says.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

ELGIN — Grocery stores are empty. Banks are closed. Power companies, unable to supply electricity. Their workers all are out, felled by a pandemic virus.

There’s no way to get food, power or access to your money. And there’s no one to answer your emergency calls, should you become sick yourself.

That’s the idea in the classic 1964 horror film “The Last Man on Earth,” starring Vincent Price. But could it be possible in this area, with flu season fast approaching and the H1N1 flu, or “swine flu,” expected to make a resurgence?

A Harvard School of Public Health survey recently found businesses are ill-prepared for a possible widespread outbreak of the flu.

Two-thirds of the more than 1,000 businesses questioned nationwide said they could not maintain normal operations if half their workers were out for two weeks, according to the survey. Four out of every five businesses reported they’d expect severe problems if half their workers were out for a month.

That includes businesses designated by the Department of Homeland Security as “critical” to the security and economic vitality of the nation, including those in the food supply chain, energy and finance.

Carol Gieske, vice president of communications and special events for the Elgin Area Chamber of Commerce, said the chamber hasn’t organized a preparedness plan for its member businesses yet.

“We don’t have a special program at this time, but if we have a need in the community, we would be willing to,” Gieske said.

Right now, she said, the chamber is taking direction from the Kane County Health Department and distributing information about H1N1 from the health department and flu.gov, which has posted guidance on planning for businesses. And, Gieske said, she knows many of its members have emergency preparedness plans in place, including plans for the possibility of pandemic flu.

One of those businesses is First Community Bank, with two locations in Elgin.

“In a scenario if half the staff is gone, you have to assume half your customers are, too,” said Joyce Lueth, senior vice president and cashier at First Community. “We’d just work with the staff we had and work with the customers who are up and out and not sick themselves.”

The bank has stocked surgical masks, latex gloves and hand sanitizer; held trainings for its employees; and passed out information they can put to use at home with their families. It always has offered to reimburse employees who get flu vaccinations, and this fall, it will host vaccination clinics at its locations for the first time, according to Lueth.

First Community’s pandemic flu policy is just part of its business continuity plan, something urged for financial institutions by their regulators, she said. Those regulating agencies include the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

“I think that people expect a way to get their funds, and banks are important to the clearing of monetary transactions in order to continue with the least amount of interruption,” Lueth said.

Emergency services are equally prepared for a possible pandemic flu in the Elgin area.

JoAnn Foley, the chief emergency preparedness officer at Sherman Hospital in Elgin, spent Thursday and Friday at an Illinois Department of Public Health meeting about pandemic flu preparedness in O’Fallon. But Foley said hospitals have been planning for the flu since at least 2006.

“It’s a major concern, because it’s a very highly skilled profession,” Foley said. “It’s hard to replace a highly skilled professional. You can’t just pull someone off the street.”

The hospital’s plan includes extending shifts, working flex time or shuffling hospital staff into other roles they are trained to fill. Sherman also has mutual aid agreements with other hospitals in the area and can share staff if a flu outbreak were to hit just one area, she said.

Seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccinations have not be mandated for hospital staff, Foley said, although she said other health care providers have, such as Loyola in Chicago.

And she said she also is working with other hospitals, long-term care facilities, schools, emergency medical services and police and fire departments across the area to develop their own pandemic flu preparedness plans.

“A lot of what we are doing with the flu plan is part of a network with Sherman Hospital and Kane County Public Health,” Battalion Chief Greg Benson of the Elgin Fire Department said.

“The police department and fire department work together to develop plans. … Nothing we’re doing is on our own. It’s all part of a bigger plan.”

That plan includes working longer shifts and filling in other roles. For instance, captains always can fill in for battalion chiefs, Benson said — that’s just part of normal operations at the fire department.

And he’s not worried if a virus took out workers for two weeks, or even a month. The battalion chief called the sustainability of the fire and police departments’ plans “solid.”

“The plans are in place,” Sherman’s Foley said. “We hope we don’t have to deal with shortages, but we’ll continue to care for our patients as best as possible.”

The Harvard School of Public Health survey, conducted by telephone between July 16 and Aug. 12, included interviews with human resources officers at 1,057 randomly selected businesses across the U.S. It included samples of small businesses with 20 to 99 employees; medium companies with 100 to 500 employees; and large businesses with more than 500 workers. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2009 Digital Chicago, Inc.

As politicians talk about health care reform, organizers of Activate Elgin – an initiative spearheaded by the YMCA – say you don’t need a total lifestyle overhaul to be healthier and more active.

Small things like taking more walks or learning more about nutrition and then applying it can go a long way toward living a healthier lifestyle.

That’s one message delivered by YMCA officials Wednesday as they outlined how they’re working with all segments of Elgin, including the city, churches, schools and businesses, and offering grants to encourage people to live healthier lives.

“The worst thing that can happen to Activate Elgin is that it’s not embraced by the community,” said Rick Reigner, president and CEO of the Greater Elgin Area YMCA. “No one organization can do it on their own.”

Activate Elgin was formed about three years ago as the Centers for Disease Control listed obesity as not only a problem but an epidemic.

With Elgin recently making bad news as being tabbed as the fattest city in Illinois based on driver’s license data, Reigner said Activate Elgin only takes on more importance.

But the change in attitudes and behavior won’t happen overnight, he warned. It could take as many as 10 years. Officials will start by gathering baseline data for Elgin.

Activate Elgin officials also landed a $48,000 grant from Kane County.

The money will be divvied up into 48 mini-grants of $1,000 spread across four categories: faith-based groups, schools, businesses and neighborhood/community organizations.

When mid-August rolled around, no one had applied for a grant. But now interest is growing.

Melissa Serritella, Activate Elgin coordinator, said 11 applications have been received so far, but she expects about 25 more before the deadline on Tuesday.

She said YMCA officials are looking for a sustainable program that can be renewed year after year through community sponsorships, not just a one-time event like a health fair. Some examples include a jump rope club and healthy cooking seminars for parents.

“We’re really trying to inspire people to make small lifestyle changes. It doesn’t even require money,” Serritella said.

For details, call (847) 888-7410, ext. 37 or visit activateelgin.com.

Copyright © 2009 Daily Herald Inc.