News

Doctors and public health experts urge people to take flu shots because, no matter how young the doctor, the 1918 influenza pandemic, the deadliest ever, could be repeated, and they know that.

1918 is shorthand in medicine for an influenza disaster.

Each year, experts assess which strains are likely to be predominant in the next flu season so that vaccine can be manufactured. These are highly-educated guesses but guesses just the same.

These strains constantly are changing, in response to opportunities of many kinds. You never know, then, what can happen.

However, a team of researchers has cracked the code of the 1918 pandemic, which should be helpful in future years.

According to the story below, what made 1918 different comes down to this. The patients who were sickest and/or died were affected by a “complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs.”

Ferrets were the animals used in the studies because their responses to flu most nearly resembles humans, the news report says.

What This Finding May Mean the Next Time There Is A Pandemic

“The three genes — called PA, PB1, and PB2 — along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu,” the story says.

- Now researchers know what made 1918 such a deadly year. The mystery of that has eluded scientists until today.

- Now researchers have replicated the 1918 gene combination with today’s flu strains—-which showed the same responses in the ferrets as occurred in humans back then.

- Now researchers understand what can make a “normal” flu year turn into a deadly one.

- This research gives researchers a template for working with dangerous influenza strains which emerge. When the drugs available at the time are effective against these strains, doctors can give patients the right drug as fast as possible.

Avian flu is anticipated to be the cause of the next pandemic by many scientists.

Reuters

….”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.”

Source:  Reuters,  December 30, 2008

Citation Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 31, 2008