“Flu” of Chemical Origin - An Under Recognized Public Health Concern

Abstract

The term "flu" is the acronym of an Italian word influenza which is believed to have derived from an epidemic in Florence in 1357 entitled ‘influenza di freddo,’ meaning ‘influence of cold’. But the word could have simply been a figure of speech for what appeared to be a disease. Later in 1933, the National Institute for Medical Research in London isolated a virus from the nasal secretions of an infected patient which eventually known as the causative agent of influenza, an acute infection of the respiratory tract (1). The common symptoms of influenza virus infection are fever, cough, sore throat, sneezing, headache, malaise, myalgia, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea (2).