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 ...
To better fight the thing if it appears again. If you understand how the virus works, you've got a much better chance of beating it.
This is deeply stupid stuff, folks. Deeply, deeply stupid.
Better look in the mirror. You might even learn something.
I am an herbalist and am very interested in this herb. Could you PM me (or on the thread ping, either way) with your source? I live in the growing area so I am also going to try to find it in the wild, but I want some now!
It is one thing to find cures for actual known deadly ailments, and another to deliberately learn ways of making common ailments more deadly.
I think that you can also get a good dose of vitamin D from sunshine. As long as you are not prone to skin cancer, if you garden in your swim trunks you will be healthy.
The critical season is December through March when it is cold and when outside your skin is covered. This is also the flu season.
You point is however well taken. Getting out in the sun in the winter is good for you
An 80 year old friend of mine runs around inside his green house half naked in the winters specifically to cultivate the vitamin D in his skin. He is not cultivating plants, just D.
My father would tell me that you'd see a fella walking down the street one day and the next day he'd be dead.
Interesting
How is his health?
It’s hard to imagine a general situation like that in the population. We don’t have that today. But, I hear it’s possible for this thing to “get loose” again, and the same thing can happen all over again.
Other than his vision getting poor, he is extremely healthy and mentally sharp. He takes no medications whatsoever. He has never drank or smoked. He eats all his vegetables but I believe that he eats a lot less meat than he did during his first 60 years.
I’m certainly no expert but it’s my understand that the virus is alive and well in avians and could mutate and make the animal to human jump again.
You said — “Snopes discredits that “Ring Around The Rosies” is about the black plague: FALSE:”
Yeah, I saw that one before, but I don’t trust Snopes... :-)
Here’s a couple of examples of Snopes on Obama and the birth certificate issue and whether Obama is qualified per the Constitution...
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/birthcertificate.asp
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp
Now..., although I don’t think we’re going to “get anywhere” with this issue as it stands right now and I think it’s going to require some state laws to correct the “vetting process” — still..., I know a lot of FReepers who would think that Snopes has it all wrong on Obama... LOL...
I don’t see that anything has been proven, one way or the other, but still..., Snopes would not be accepted by a lot of FReepers here.
I would say that Snopes is not a reliable source... (unless your mileage would vary on Obama...)
Yeah, I couldn’t say exactly either, without doing some checking. But, if my memory serves me correctly from some other previous reading, I believe this 1918 flu was completely different. In fact, they’re treating it *very very carefully* so that it can’t “get out”... (at least not by their own hands, in what they are doing in studying it...).
Let’s hope we don’t have to find out.
Oh, yes, I agree — you cannot trust Snopes on politics. I thought though that the song reference would be more of a true or false than the quick short shrift they make to protect all liberals.
Well, I’m not sure that Snopes is entirely unbiased in its methodology, although it “tries” to show that it is. And if it’s not entirely unbiased in its own methodology, then errors can show up elsewhere, too. Beside that, any website that presents itself as the “authority” — I’ve got some trouble with it...
I sort of believe that this little ditty was from that time period.
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