It’s the case of the missing flu virus. When the flu isn’t making people sick, it seems to just vanish. Yet, every year, everywhere on Earth, it reappears in the appropriate season and starts its attack. So where does it go when it disappears? Does it hibernate, lying dormant in a few people and preparing for its next onslaught? Does it bounce around from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere and back, following the seasons?

Influenza is currently a grave concern for governments and health organisations around the world. The worry is the potential for highly virulent bird flu strains, such as H5N1, to develop the ability to infect humans easily.

The high costs of hospitalizing young children for influenza creates a significant economic burden in the United States, underscoring the importance of preventive flu shots for children and the people with whom they have regular contact, according to research led by Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and presented May 4 at the Pediatric Academic Society annual meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Each winter, strains of influenza A virus infect North Americans, causing an average of 36,000 deaths. Now, researchers say the virus comes from a viral reservoir somewhere in the tropics, settling a key debate on the source of each season's infection.

Seasonal influenza strains constantly evolve in overlapping epidemics in Asia and sweep the rest of the world each year, an international research team has found.

The journal Respirology has launched a special supplementary issue on the avian influenza. Published by Wiley-Blackwell, the collection of papers present an inclusive insight into the threat of the avian influenza pandemic by addressing a wide range of topics including the basic biology of the virus, updates on laboratory diagnosis and influenza anti-viral, treatment options, and pandemic planning.

STMicroelectronics and Veredus Laboratories Launch Market's First Lab-on-Chip for Rapid Molecular Flu Detection at Point of Need Called VereFlu.

Researchers at McGill University have discovered a way to boost an organism’s natural anti-virus defences, effectively making its cells immune to influenza and other viruses.

A new study published in the February 2008 issue of Pediatrics finds that many children hospitalized for influenza have had a recent, previous hospitalization that would have provided an easy, convenient opportunity to receive a hospital-based influenza vaccination.

Influenza is a viral infection that affects millions of people each year and potentially can cause serious complications, especially in children and older adults.

Scientists have identified a key factor that determines the ability of influenza viruses to infect cells of the human upper respiratory tract—a necessary step for sustaining spread between people.

Researchers have created a new approach for studying resistance to Neuraminidase Inhibitors (NI) in influenza. The study, published December 7 in PLoS Computational Biology, combines data from influenza infections of human volunteers with a mathematical model which estimates the expected number of newly generated resistant infections.