Maria Inês Azambuja,
MD, PhD, Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
What if the Russian Demographic Crisis Had a Hidden Ecologic Cause?
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2024-3-18
Russia death rates decline during the 1950s, rose from the mid-1960s until the early 2000s before declining slightly again after 2004. The trends have been attributed to economic trends and prospects, and alcohol consumption. Not-disregarding a contribution of social factors, a new idea is proposed here: that the observed trends in mortality (and fertility) could have resulted from an ecologic interplay between two populations: humans and influenza A viruses. It is proposed that the immune-inflammatory phenotype emerging from the interaction between early priming and re-infection by influenza A subtypes may be protective (if same subtype) or enhancer (if different subtypes) of morbidity upon challenges by other environmental exposures. Conclusions: The use of 1-year intervals to describe APC mortality trends both increases the amount of information available, thus enhancing the opportunities for patterns’ recognition, and increases our capability of interpreting those patterns by describing trends across smaller intervals of time (period or birth-cohort). A preliminary analysis of the Russia mortality experience having this influenza hypothesis in mind is shown here, but it needs refinement based on better knowledge of demographics and influenza in Russia. Some patterns described here are similar to ones found in the US. One example is the increase in AIDS mortality among those born from 1947–1968, in periods dominated by H3 strains. Comparative analysis of mortality landscapes across countries may help us to straighten our record of past circulation of Influenza viruses and document associations between influenza recycling and mortality (and fertility) changes.
Publishing: 28/06/2024
The article has been received by the editor on 09/07/2023
How to cite: Azambuja M.I. What if the Russian Demographic Crisis Had a Hidden Ecologic Cause? // Historical Courier, 2024, No. 3 (35), pp. 234–246. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2024/ISTKURIER-2024-1-18.pdf]
Links: Issue 3 2024
Keywords: Russia; Age-period-cohort trends; epidemic constitutions; fertility; influenza; mortality