This week two new findings were published about the 1918 influenza pandemic. The first looked at preserved lung tissue from soldiers that died from the pandemic. They examined 58 samples and found that in most cases the predominant disease at the time of death appeared to have been bacterial pneumonia. It is hypothesized that influenza virus damaged the cells of the tissue lining the lung allowing the bacteria to invade and eventually led to death of the host. The authors of the study concluded:
“if severe pandemic influenza is largely a problem of viral-bacterial copathogenesis [double infection], pandemic planning needs to go beyond addressing the viral cause alone (e.g., influenza vaccines and antiviral drugs). Prevention, diagnosis, prophylaxis, and treatment of secondary bacterial pneumonia, as well as stockpiling of antibiotics and bacterial vaccines, should also be high priorities for pandemic planning.”
Click here to read the original scientific article in the Journal of Infectious Disease or here to read a ScienceDaily news report
The second finding examined if people that survived the flu had antibodies against the 1918 influenza pandemic in their body. The researchers collected blood samples from 32 survivors age 91-101 years and found that all reacted to the 1918 virus, suggesting that they still possessed antibodies to the virus. One of the researchers, Dr. James Crowe Jr., stated
"The B cells have been waiting for at least 60 years – if not 90 years – for that flu to come around again. That's amazing…because it's the longest memory anyone's ever demonstrated."
The research team went on to see if the antibody protected against the 1918 strain of influenza by infecting mice with the influenza. Some had been treated with the antibodies – others had not. They found that the mice receiving the highest dose of antibodies survived and the others died. For a well written summary of the research in ScienceDaily click here.
Tags : What are your thoughts about the reconstruction of the 1918 flu virus?
- Richard H. Ebright, a microbiologist at Rutgers University, has serious concerns and believes "there is a risk verging on inevitability, of accidental release of the virus; there is also a risk of deliberate release of the virus."
- Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (which helped pay for the reconstruction work), says that the board "voted unanimously that the benefits outweighed the risk that it would be used in a nefarious manner."
What do YOU think?
Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and the Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory, have successfully reconstructed the 1918 influenza (flu) virus, the cause of one of the most deadly epidemics in history. The 1918 influenza virus infected nearly one third of the world's population and killed nearly 50 million people. In the process of reconstructing the virus scientists learned that the virus originated as a bird flu that jumped directly to humans. The reconstruction of the 1918 virus will help scientists prepare for the next influenza pandemic.
H5N1 Virus: Colorized transmission electron micrograph of Avian influenza A H5N1 viruses (seen in gold). Image courtesy CDC/C. Goldsmith, J. Katz, and S. Zaki.
The virus was reconstructed using lung tissue recovered from two soldiers and an Alaskan woman who died during the 1918 pandemic. The tissue from the soldier's lungs had been saved in an Army pathology warehouse, and the tissue from the Alaskan woman's lungs was preserved as she was buried in permafrost.
Influenza pandemics occur when a new strain of the virus emerges to which people have little or no immunity. The research, published in recent issues of Science and Nature, allows researchers to learn what made the 1918 pandemic so much more deadly than other pandemics that came after 1918 (the1957 Asian flu and the 1968 Hong Kong Flu).
There is concern that the current avian flu viruses, H5N1, could make a similar jump from birds to humans as the 1918 virus. Nearly all the people who have been infected with H5N1 contracted the virus directly from birds.
There was no danger to the public from the recreation of the 1918 virus as not only was the research conducted in a level 3 biosafety lab, but since most flu viruses today are "descendants" of the 1918 flu, people today have some immunity to that strain. There is no such immunity to the H5N1 virus in people now, which is what worries many researchers and physicians.
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