Salicylates and Pandemic Influenza Mortality

This report seems to follow the current concern over cytokine storm that leads to build up of fluid in the lungs and related symproms that may lead to severe consequences or death.

In addition to our recommendations for this flu season of vitamin C, vitamin D, garlic and specific other natural therapy, we suggesst Nettle because it is a very potent cytokine reducer (what the TNF drugs do) without suppressing your immune system.

The high case‐fatality rate—especially among young adults—during the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic is incompletely understood. Although late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia, early deaths exhibited extremely “wet,” sometimes hemorrhagic lungs. The hypothesis presented herein is that aspirin contributed to the incidence and severity of viral pathology, bacterial infection, and death, because physicians of the day were unaware that the regimens (8.0–31.2 g per day) produce levels associated with hyperventilation and pulmonary edema in 33% and 3% of recipients, respectively. Recently, pulmonary edema was found at autopsy in 46% of 26 salicylate‐intoxicated adults. Experimentally, salicylates increase lung fluid and protein levels and impair mucociliary clearance. In 1918, the US Surgeon General, the US Navy, and the Journal of the American Medical Association recommended use of aspirin just before the October death spike. If these recommendations were followed, and if pulmonary edema occurred in 3% of persons, a significant proportion of the deaths may be attributable to aspirin.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/606060

Aspirin Misuse May Have Made 1918 Flu Pandemic Worse

ScienceDaily (2009-10-03) -- The devastation of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic is well known, but a new article suggests a surprising factor in the high death toll: the misuse of aspirin. AThe article sounds a cautionary note as present day concerns about the novel H1N1 virus run high. ... > read full article