(2005) Scientists Resurrect Deadly Flu Virus (1918 Spanish Flu "resurrected" at CDC 2005)

Scientists have resurrected one of the world's great killers in the laboratory, hoping that the genetic secrets within the 1918 influenza virus will help them predict and combat the next major microbial threat to mankind.

In a contained laboratory at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, scientists used reverse genetics to re-create the 1918 flu virus that killed 20 million to 50 million people, according to studies released Wednesday. Scientists say that although the 1918 strain probably does not represent a significant human health threat today, it can provide insight into dangerous types of contemporary influenza, such as the highly lethal avian strain now circulating among birds, which some scientists fear could evolve into the next catastrophic pandemic.

Initial comparisons with the 1918 strain show that the H5N1 strain seems to have already made some of the molecular changes it needs to become a pandemic strain - a virulent flu capable of being readily transmitted from person to person, said Dr. Jeffrey K. Taubenberger, a researcher with the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Md., and author of one of the papers.

However, the H5N1 strain still needs to make several evolutionary leaps before it becomes a widespread threat to human health, he said.

The 1918 flu was an H1N1 virus, a type that most of the world had never been exposed to at that time, just as people today have developed no immunity against the H5N1 strain. Most people today have antibodies to H1N1, meaning that they have some immune protection against the 1918 strain, Gerberding said. Also, the 1918 strain seems susceptible to anti-viral drugs currently on the market, she said.

Sorry about the crosspost. I added this to a previous thread, but it’s more applicable to this one.

The influenza epidemic of 1916-18 was pretty fascinating. Though I’m certainly not old enough to have been around, my grandfather was (a doctor in a small town in SE Nebraska). He remembered it vividly. It was not uncommon to find people dead, in the ditches along the road, as they were walking into town.

The course of the disease was usually quite rapid, and it didn’t take the old and the young, like you might think. It killed those in the prime of their lives (late teens to thirties). How was that possible? It’s conjectured that a robustly active antibody system was what killed the military aged folks that got hit the hardest. Their system overreacted, in effect. When you’re very young, your immune system is not fully developed, and thus tempers your response to the virus. The same goes for geezers, such as myself. My system is on the way out and is spooling down as my “galloping senescence” has its way with me. The recruits in places like Ft. Reilly literally suffocated when their lungs rapidly filled with fluids as their system reacted to the disease.

Some medical types, figure that a similar strain went through the population a year or so before, setting up folks immune system to go hog wild (sorry) when exposed to a slightly different bug. It’s all guesses, but still fascinating stuff. It really did kill a bazillion folks when it happened, and I ‘spect it could do it again. At least the folks at CDC seem to have the same uneasiness about what seems to be approaching us.

Whether it’s H1N1, or H5N1, if the virus is lined up the proper way, it’ll carve another path. Might not kill as many, but on the other hand, it might kill worser!

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