The DOI matches its Crossref record; 25 of the 25 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
World war I may have allowed the emergence of “Spanish” influenza.
Abstract
The 1918 influenza pandemic caused 40 million deaths, and so dwarfed in mortality and morbidity the preceding pandemic of 1889 and the 1957 and 1968 pandemics. In retrospect, much can be learnt about the source, the possible subterranean spread of virus, and the genetic basis of virulence. The World Health Organization has urged every nation to prepare a pandemic plan for the first global outbreak of the 21st century. We present an appraisal of epidemiological and mortality evidence of early outbreaks of respiratory disease in France and the UK in the years 1915 to 1917. Certain of these earlier focal outbreaks--called epidemic bronchitis rather than influenza--occurred during the winter months when influenza was known to be in circulation, and presented with a particular heliotrope cyanosis that was so prominent in the clinical diagnosis in the world pandemic outbreak of 1918-1919 (the Great Pandemic). The outbreaks in army camps at Etaples in France and Aldershot in the UK in 1916-1917 caused very high mortality in 25-35 year olds. Increased deaths from bronchopneumonia and influenza were also recorded in England. We deduce that early focal outbreaks of influenza-like disease occurred in Europe and on the balance of probability the Great Pandemic was not initiated in Spain in 1918 but in another European country in the winter of 1916 or 1917. We suggest that the pandemic had its origins on the Western Front, and that World War I was a contributor.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Additional post-mortems of lung tissue suggest that at least 90% of samples showed evidence of bacterial infection (Oxford et al., 2002; Morens et al., 2008; Chien et al., 2009).”
From Secondary bacterial infections associated with influenza pandemics (2017) · cites this paper as Oxford et al., 2002
Citations
Cites
TOXIC-SHOCK SYNDROME NOT ASSOCIATED WITH MENSTRUATION
Reingold, A. L., Shands, K. N., Dan, B. B., & Broome, C. V. (1982) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(82)92552-1 · Cited by 1,164
Yuen, K., Chan, P., Peiris, M. J. S., Tsang, D., Que, T., Shortridge, K. F., Cheung, P., To, W., Ho, E., Sung, R. Y. T., et al. (1998) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(98)01182-9 · Cited by 1,054
Initial Genetic Characterization of the 1918 “Spanish” Influenza Virus
Taubenberger, J. K., Reid, A. H., Krafft, A. E., Bijwaard, K. E., & Fanning, T. G. (1997) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.275.5307.1793 · Cited by 715
The Economic Impact of Pandemic Influenza in the United States: Priorities for Intervention
Meltzer, M. I., Cox, N. J., & Fukuda, K. (1999) · Emerging infectious diseases · doi:10.3201/eid0505.990507 · Cited by 698
(2013) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9781118636817 · Cited by 665
Origin and evolution of the 1918 “Spanish” influenza virus hemagglutinin gene
Reid, A. H., Fanning, T. G., Hultin, J. V., & Taubenberger, J. K. (1999) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.96.4.1651 · Cited by 607
Welliver, C. (2001) · JAMA · doi:10.1001/jama.285.6.748 · Cited by 471
Inhaled Zanamivir for the Prevention of Influenza in Families
Hayden, F. G., Gubareva, L. V., Monto, A. S., Klein, T. C., Elliott, M. J., Hammond, J., Sharp, S. J., & Ossi, M. J. (2000) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm200011023431801 · Cited by 369
America's Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918
Crosby, A. W. (2003) · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511586576 · Cited by 357
International Editors: Emerging Viral Diseases: An Australian Perspective
Mackenzie, J. S. (1999) · Emerging infectious diseases · doi:10.3201/eid0501.990101 · Cited by 200
Cited by
Sorted by citations
1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics
Taubenberger, J. K., & Morens, D. M. (2006) · Emerging Infectious Diseases · doi:10.3201/eid1201.050979 · Cited by 1,686
1918 Influenza: the Mother of All Pandemics
Taubenberger, J. K., & Morens, D. M. (2006) · Emerging Infectious Diseases · doi:10.3201/eid1209.05-0979 · Cited by 1,590
Secondary bacterial infections associated with influenza pandemics
Morris, D. E., Cleary, D. W., & Clarke, S. C. (2017) · Frontiers in Microbiology · doi:10.3389/fmicb.2017.01041 · Cited by 576
“Additional postmortems of lung tissue suggest that at least 90% of samples showed evidence of bacterial infection (Oxford et al., 2002; Morens et al., 2008; Chien et al., 2009).”
BackgroundInfluenza Seasonality: Underlying Causes and Modeling Theories
Lofgren, E., Fefferman, N. H., Naumov, Y. N., Gorski, J., & Naumova, E. N. (2006) · Journal of Virology · doi:10.1128/jvi.01680-06 · Cited by 560
“The origin and spread of the 1918 influenza pandemic has been attributed to the hypercrowded conditions on military bases during the First World War, allowing several theories concerning the pandemic’s origin to emerge, one implicating the European Western Front (63) and another a U.”
BackgroundEnhanced virulence of influenza A viruses with the haemagglutinin of the 1918 pandemic virus
Kobasa, D., Takada, A., Shinya, K., Hatta, M., Halfmann, P., Theriault, S., Suzuki, H., Nishimura, H., Mitamura, K., Sugaya, N., et al. (2004) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature02951 · Cited by 458
“Attempts to account for the unusually high virulence of the virus have focused on the living conditions of soldiers, a highly susceptible group, and of civilians at the end of the First World Wa”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Oxford, J., Sefton, A., Jackson, R., Innes, W., Daniels, R., & Johnson, N.
- Affiliations
- University of London (GB)
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- ORCID
- Venue
- The Lancet Infectious Diseases
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2002-02
- Volume
- 2
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 111-114
- ISSN
- 1473-3099 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2164014373
- Cited by
- 139
- References
- 25
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 3 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 4 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 3.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Lancet Infectious Diseases (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Influenza Virus Research Studies
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Respiratory viral infections research
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Epidemiology › Historical and modern epidemiology studies
- Keywords
- 1918 influenza pandemic, pandemic origins, World War I, military camps, Etaples, Aldershot, bronchopneumonia, influenza mortality, pandemic preparedness, viral virulence
- MeSH terms
- Disaster Planning, Disease Outbreaks, France, United Kingdom, Humans, Influenza, Human, Warfare, History, 20th Century
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
