Posted on 12/29/2008 4:37:07 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly -- a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.
They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.
The discovery, published in Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.
Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans.
Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness.
But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly.
During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges.
"The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide," Kawaoka's team wrote.
It killed 2.5 percent of victims, compared to fewer than 1 percent during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia.
"We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia," Kawaoka said in a statement.
They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract.
But a complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
pandemic ping
My mom survived it, but her health was never good again. The whole family had it, and survived, but no one was ever really "healthy" again afterwards.
My grandmother told me many times about that epidemic. Her favorite phrase was, “They were dropping like flies in the street...”
And, that was true. People would go to work, at the beginning of the day, feeling fine — and by the time they went home, they were dead. It was that quick.
Furthermore, she told me they stacked people up like cord-word on push wagons, picking up dead bodies on the street.
I’m just repeating what she told me, and she was there at the time...
I don’t think that it was the most deadly epidemic as a percentage of population. That award probably goes to the Black Death. In Iceland, that ripped through the population twice, killing about half of the population each time.
Another oddity about the WWI flue is that it killed mostly young adults, not so much little children or the elderly. This has suggested to some that part of its deadliness is that it engendered an extreme iand dangerously excessive immune response.
Sounds horrible. It will happen again, I fear. Just a matter of time.
big laughs with this 1917 kids ditty.
” had a little bird, and it’s name was Enza. I opened the window, and in flew enza”
Funny, a group of researchers have been working on 1918F for about 20 years and found for the most part, the flu didn’t kill the victim, the victims immune system did. Seems we generally has a much stronger immune system back then, simply because of the lack of sanitation and antibiotics and antiseptics in general use. We were exposed to much more “bad stuff” back then, and when your IS turned against you, is was most always fatal. I wonder how all this “new research” is going to fit in to the mix....
They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.
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I hope they are very very very careful when handling these viruses. It would be a catastrophe if the 1918 influenza were to make its way into the general population.
My mother’s little brother ( a baby) died.
I read a couple of books about it this summer. It sounds like it was an amazingly awful experience. What I find interesting is the lack of contemporaneous writings about it. It was as if it was too horrible an experience on which to reflect.
Vitamen A 2000 units a day every day until the flu begins in your area then 4000 units per day.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1929828/posts
Makes sense. The danger in pneumonia is the immune response, the result of which is excessive fluid buildup in the lungs.
And then, for the Bubonic Plague, there was “Ring around the Rosie...”
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/248783/ring_around_the_rosie_is_about_the.html
bing-o
My grandmother, living in Canada, died as a result of this epidemic in late October 1918. She was a ministers wife and was tending to parishioners that were sick. She died within a day of coming down with the symptoms. My father was 5 years old. WWI would end just a few weeks later on November 11, 1918.
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