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SNIP Ever since, a cottage industry has aimed to understand Beethoven’s illnesses and the cause of his death. Now, an analysis of strands of his hair has upended long held beliefs about his health. The report provides an explanation for his debilitating ailments and even his death, while also raising new questions about his genealogical origins and hinting at a dark family secret. The paper, by an international group of researchers, was published Wednesday in the journal Current Biology. It offers additional surprises: A famous lock of hair — the subject of a book and a documentary — was not...

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — When Sharif Tabebordbar was born in 1986, his father, Jafar, was 32 and already had symptoms of a muscle wasting disease. The mysterious illness would come to define Sharif’s life. Jafar Tabebordbar could walk when he was in his 30s but stumbled and often lost his balance. Then he lost his ability to drive. When he was 50, he could use his hands. Now he has to support one hand with another. No one could answer the question plaguing Sharif and his younger brother, Shayan: What was this disease? And would they develop it the way their...

The 1918 Influenza Pandemic was the deadliest in human history. But the virus was a part of the historical events of the time. The History Guy recalls the forgotten history of how the events of 1918 shaped, and were shaped by, the pandemic. It is history that deserves to be remembered.

‘In the winter of 1918-1919, a flu pandemic affected 500 million people and killed between 40 million and 70 million. ’ In the autumn of 1918, a global influenza outbreak began that would claim more lives than World War I (or the Great War). The war itself, which ended in November 1918, had a significant impact on how the virus spread around the world – and even influenced the name Spanish Flu. Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, ill with Spanish influenza at a hospital ward at Camp Funston (US Army Photographer) ___________________________________________________________________ There was nothing particular ‘Spanish’ about the flu:...

Fat people have less than thin people. Older people have less than younger people. Men have less than younger women. It is brown fat, actually brown in color, and its great appeal is that it burns calories like a furnace... --snip-- The brown fat also kept its subjects warm. The more brown fat a man had, the colder he could get before he started to shiver. Brown fat, Dr. Carpentier and Jan Nedergaard, Dr. Cannon’s husband, wrote in an accompanying editorial, “is on fire.” On average, Dr. Carpentier said, the brown fat burned about 250 calories over three hours. But...

ST. LOUIS • On Oct. 5, 1918, the city health department issued this warning: “Avoid persons with colds.” Dr. Max C. Starkloff, health commissioner, knew that wasn’t nearly enough. Two days later, with Mayor Henry Kiel’s strong backing, he issued an emergency order closing schools, theaters, pool halls, playgrounds and other public places. The strategy was known as “social distancing,” and the motive was to fight the Spanish flu that was sweeping the world. The misnamed influenza would kill many more people than the ghastly meat-grinder known as the Great War. The order was extreme, but it worked — St....

A panel of infectious diseases experts this morning expressed far more grave concerns for Americans about the risks of flu and enterovirus D68 than for Ebola virus disease. That’s noteworthy because the group included Bruce Ribner, MD, MPH, the Emory University Hospital doctor who led the team that successfully treated two Ebola-infected medical missionaries, Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol. Infectious diseases caregivers and public health professionals are gathered in Philadelphia through the weekend for the annual meeting of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA), more commonly known as IDWeek 2014. (You can also follow attendees in real-time on...

We've seen promising moves towards developing a universal or near-universal influenza vaccine, but researchers at the Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center have taken a different tack to ward of the crafty virus. Although the flu virus actively keeps the immune system from detecting it for a few days, giving it time to gain a foothold, the researchers have found that a powerful synthetic protein, known as EP67, can kick start the immune system so that it reacts almost immediately to all strains of the virus. Previously, EP67 had primarily been used to help activate the immune response by being added...

One Sunday in November 20-year-old Alani Murrieta of Phoenix began to feel sick and left work early. She had no preexisting medical conditions but her health declined at a frighteningly rapid pace, as detailed by her family and friends in local media and on BuzzFeed News. The next day she went to an urgent care clinic, where she was diagnosed with the flu and prescribed the antiviral medication Tamiflu. But by Tuesday morning she was having trouble breathing and was spitting up blood. Her family took her to the hospital, where x-rays revealed pneumonia: inflammation in the lungs that can...

compound found in the protective slime of an Indian frog blows apart flu viruses and might become a powerful new drug to treat influenza, researchers reported Tuesday. The compound, a small structure called a peptide, cured mice of killer doses of human flu, the research team reported in the journal Immunity. hey hope to develop it and other compounds like it into antiviral drugs to treat people. "This peptide kills the viruses. It kind of blows them up," Joshy Jacob of Emory University, who led the study team, told NBC News. And it seems harmless to healthy tissue. "There's no...

he mucus of a rare frog that lurks in the South Indian jungle could provide the basis of a powerful new class of drugs to combat influenza, scientists have said. The bright orange tennis ball-sized Hydrophylax bahuvistara was found to contain “host defence peptides” that proved able to destroy numerous strains of human flu, whilst protecting normal cells. Researchers are excited because the peptide showed it could bind to a protein that is identical across “dozens” of strains of the disease, increasing its potential potency as a drug. People would be advised to treat the Keralan amphibian with caution, however,...

Scientists say 'Enigma machine' has unlocked clues to the way the virus of the common cold assembles - making it possible to stop disease in its tracks A scientific breakthrough could herald an end to the common cold, after researchers found a way to “jam” the genetic code and stop the virus replicating. Experts said the discovery could allow scientists to design molecules which could “stop the virus in its tracks” - fending off colds and winter vomiting disease. Scientists from the Universities of Leeds and York used a computer-based model to identify a code in the viral genome, which...

I have had what seems like the flu or 2 or 3 weeks. It is a killer sore throat, moderate cough. But it is the sore throat that is killing me. Anyway, I just dragged myself out to Trader Joe's to buy something tempting and thought I would check out their tiny medicine section. I saw and bought Oscillococcinum which was hiding on the bottoms half. I know nothing about it except what I just learned in Wikipedia. Does anyone have experience with this stuff. The Amazon page with photos http://www.amazon.com/Boiron-Oscillococcinum-Flu-like-Symptoms-Pellets/dp/B0078W0QOI

Chinese researchers have discovered what they say is the first ‘virological penicillin’ – MIR2911, a molecule found naturally in a Chinese herb called honeysuckle. Honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica) is a well-known Chinese herb. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, it has been used to effectively treat influenza infection for centuries. Several previous studies have confirmed that the herb, usually consumed in the form of a tea, can suppress the replication of influenza virus. However, the active anti-viral components and the mechanism by which they block viral replication have remained unclear. Now, a team of researchers headed by Dr Chen-Yu Zhang of Nanjing University...

By The Week Staff August 30, 2014Think Ebola is alarming? Scientists expect a much deadlier virus to emerge in the not-distant future. How likely is a pandemic? Epidemiologists believe we're statistically overdue for a global viral outbreak, which occurs every generation or so. This year's Ebola crisis is probably just a dress rehearsal: Though the virus has killed at least 1,420 people in Africa in the last five months, Ebola is transmitted only through intimate contact with bodily fluids and doesn't have the global reach of a true pandemic, such as Spanish influenza in 1918. Humanity had no prior exposure...

University of California, Davis, researchers studying the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, formerly referred to as "swine flu," have identified a group of immunologically important sites on the virus that are also present in seasonal flu viruses that have been circulating for years. These molecular sites appear to result in some level of immunity to the new virus in people who were exposed to the earlier influenza viruses. More than a dozen structural sites, or epitopes, in the virus may explain why many people over the age of 60, who were likely exposed to similar viruses earlier in life, carry antibodies...

The body of Sir Mark Sykes - who died nearly 90 years ago from Spanish Flu - has been exhumed from his grave in the church of St Mary's, Sledmere, in a bid to help prevent a modern flu pandemic. The exhumation, on the morning of September 8, was carried out by a team led by one of the world's top virologists Prof John Oxford - Professor of Virology at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry. Prof Oxford previously told the Driffield Times: "If we can get samples, that will be wonderful for my team...

Editor's note: With fears of a swine flu pandemic rising daily, CNN Pentagon producer Larry Shaughnessy remembered a batch of letters from his grandfather, a World War I soldier who battled the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919."I'm coming, I'm coming For my head is bending low I hear those gentle voices calling Old Black Joe" As World War I rages in Europe, fresh U.S. Army soldiers pass the time on a train ride to to Camp Forrest, Georgia. "The boys are just starting to sing," Martin Aloysius Culhane wrote on September 6, 1918, to his friend back home. "They've gotten...

SUNDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) -- People who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million worldwide are still producing antibodies to the virus 90 years later, researchers report. "Most people have a notion that elderly people have very weak immunity or they have lost immunity," said lead researcher Dr. James E. Crowe Jr., a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University. "This study shows that extremely elderly people have retained memory of being infected with the 1918 flu, even 90 years later," Crowe said. This is the first evidence that shows that people developed significant...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Saline spray may help control fluBy Maggie FoxREUTERS NEWS AGENCYPublished November 30, 2004 Simply inhaling a saltwater spray could help prevent the spread of diseases including flu and tuberculosis, U.S. and German researchers reported yesterday.     They found a saline spray, administered using a device called a jet nebulizer, reduced the number of germ-spreading droplets by as much as 70 percent for six hours.     The findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could provide a way to help control epidemics, such as the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome that spread...