Although influenza A/H1N1v infections were globally self-limited, pediatric burden of disease was significant. Children of more than 2 years old and/or suffering from chronic co-morbidities were shown at higher risk of severe infection. Compared to other countries experiencing different health care systems, our Belgian cohort was younger and received less frequently antiviral therapy; disease course and mortality were however similar. A Quantitative Method for the Specific Assessment of Caspase-6 Activity in Cell Culture Aberrant activation of caspase-6 has recently emerged as a major contributor to the pathogeneses of neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's and Huntington disease. Commercially available assays to measure caspase-6 activity commonly use the VEID peptide as a substrate. However these methods are not well suited to specifically assess caspase-6 activity in the presence of other, confounding protease activities, as often encountered in cell and tissue samples. Here we report the development of a method that overcomes this limitation by using a protein substrate, lamin A, which is highly specific for caspase-6 cleavage at amino acid 230. Using a neo-epitope antibody against cleaved lamin A, we developed an electrochemiluminescence-based ELISA assay that is suitable to specifically detect and quantify caspase-6 activity in highly apoptotic cell extracts. The method is more sensitive than VEID-based assays and can be adapted to a high-content imaging platform for high-throughput screening. This method should be useful to screen for and characterize caspase-6 inhibitor compounds and other interventions to decrease intracellular caspase-6 activity for applications in neurodegenerative disorders. Proteases of the caspase family are known as important mediators of apoptosis and have been commonly subdivided based on their roles in apoptosis or inflammation (apoptotic initiator, apoptotic executioner or inflammatory caspases). This definition however has become somewhat inaccurate as an increasing number of non-apoptotic roles for both initiator and executioner caspases have been identified that mediate cell differentiation, maturation and signaling events [1] .