Viral Shedding and Transmission Potential of Asymptomatic and Paucisymptomatic Influenza Virus Infections in the Community
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Influenza virus infections are associated with a wide spectrum of disease. However, few studies have investigated in detail the epidemiological and virological characteristics of asymptomatic and mild illness with influenza virus infections. Methods: In a community-based study in Hong Kong from 2008 to 2014, we followed up initially healthy individuals who were household contacts of symptomatic persons with laboratory-confirmed influenza, to identify secondary infections. Information from daily symptom diaries was used to classify infections as symptomatic (≥2 signs/symptoms, including fever ≥37.8°C, headache, myalgia, cough, sore throat, runny nose and sputum), paucisymptomatic (1 symptom only), or asymptomatic (none of these symptoms). We compared the patterns of influenza viral shedding between these groups. Results: We identified 235 virologically confirmed secondary cases of influenza virus infection in the household setting, including 31 (13%) paucisymptomatic and 25 (11%) asymptomatic cases. The duration of viral RNA shedding was shorter and declined more rapidly in paucisymptomatic and asymptomatic than in symptomatic cases. The mean levels of influenza viral RNA shedding in asymptomatic and paucisymptomatic cases were approximately 1-2 log10 copies lower than in symptomatic cases. Conclusions: The presence of influenza viral shedding in patients with influenza who have very few or no symptoms reflects their potential for transmitting the virus to close contacts. These findings suggest that further research is needed to investigate the contribution of persons with asymptomatic or clinically mild influenza virus infections to influenza virus transmission in household, institutional, and community settings.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".