Influenza / Flu: Epidemics & Epidemiology

[KeyserXSoze]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994435

North American flu epidemic spreading

18:20 28 November 03

The flu epidemic is continuing to spread across North America, with the first child to die in Canada this season being reported in Ontario on Friday.

Influenza is already known to have killed four children in Colorado, US, and five in the UK, as well as many adults. US health officials are particularly concerned as flu has arrived earlier than for many years, raising concern that there may be a more severe epidemic.

The main strain of flu virus seen has also only recently emerged and is not specifically covered in the make-up of the 2003 flu vaccine.

"We're very concerned [by the] earlier onset, and some parts of the country are having very high levels of widespread flu infection," Julie Gerberding of the US Centers of Disease Control and Prevention warned earlier in November.

Because of the early onset and different flu strain, CDC is particularly urging those over 50 to get a flu jab, as well as recommending it for children aged six to 23 months.

Children are likely to be more vulnerable this year. "When flu strains change over time, they are more likely to affect the young who will have less immunity to them," says John Watson, a respiratory expert at the UK's Health Protection Agency. However, UK government advisers say the deaths in children are not above the numbers normally expected in the annual flu epidemic.

'At-risk' groups

In the UK, vaccination is recommended for those above 65 and children in "at-risk" groups such as those with asthma, diabetes or heart conditions. But following the deaths this season, the UK's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation convened its influenza panel in November to discuss the situation.

"The group concluded that the current level of reported deaths in children was not unexpected, but that the situation should be closely monitored," the meeting concluded.

A spokeswoman for the HPA notes two or three children die of flu every week in the UK during a normal outbreak. Many children get the flu, partly because they frequently mix with other children and partly because they are too young to have built up strong immunity, she told New Scientist.

The HPA also points out that the flu seasons of the last three years have been "unusually quiet".

Animal experiments

The main flu strain circulating in North America and the UK this year is the Fujian strain of influenza A (H3N2). It was detected in extremely small numbers in the UK in winter 2002. But the HPA notes it was the main flu strain in Australia during that country's winter earlier in 2003.

Gerberding says that although CDC is concerned about the new strain, animal experiments show the flu vaccine prepared in advance for the 2003 to 2004 season offers some protection against the Fujian strain. This is because the vaccine protects against another strain of influenza A (H3N2), known as the Panama strain.

Flu evolves constantly, which is why a new flu vaccine must be developed every year to try to match new strains. The World Health Organization decides on the composition of the following winter's flu vaccine in February.

Deep trouble

But producing the vaccine is a time-consuming process, as the viral genes are "grown" in chicken eggs. Scientists warned on Friday that the time lag would leave the world vulnerable in the event of a flu pandemic.

"The world will be in deep trouble if the impending influenza pandemic strikes this week, this month, or even this year," argue Richard Webby and Robert Webster of St Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, writing in Science (vol 302, p1519).

They suggest the US government should facilitate the use of a new technique called "reverse genetics" which produces vaccines much faster. They also suggest stockpiling antiviral drugs.

The last flu pandemic in 1918 is believed to have killed 50 million people worldwide.

:sad:

 

[SoundDust]

from the New Scientists website today

Experts fear escape of 1918 flu from lab

10:33 21 October 04

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.


The 1918 flu virus spread across the world in three months and killed at least 40 million people. If it escaped from a lab today, the death toll could be far higher. “The potential implications of an infected lab worker – and spread beyond the lab – are terrifying,” says D. A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh, a leading biosecurity expert.

Yet despite the danger, researchers in the US are working with reconstructed versions of the virus at less than the maximum level of containment. Many other experts are worried about the risks. “All the virologists I have spoken to have concerns,” says Ingegerd Kallings of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease Control in Stockholm, who helped set laboratory safety standards for the World Health Organization.

Work on the 1918 flu virus is not the only worry. Some experiments with bird flu have also been criticised as dangerous (New Scientist print edition, 28 February 2004).

Kallings and others are calling for international discussions to resolve the issues related to such work. “It is time for influenza scientists to find a consensus on containment,” she says. John MacKenzie of the University of Queensland in Australia, who investigated how the SARS virus escaped from high-level containment labs in east Asia on three occasions after lab workers became infected, agrees. “A meeting would be beneficial.”


Gene sequencing

The researchers working on the 1918 virus say their work is vital to understand what changes make flu viruses dangerous. So far five of the 1918 flu virus’s eight genes have been sequenced, using fragments retrieved from victims of the pandemic. Several teams have added one or more of these genes to modern flu viruses, or plan to – in effect partially recreating the long-vanished pandemic virus.

The latest work was done by Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. His team showed that adding the 1918 gene for the surface protein haemagglutinin to modern viruses made them far deadlier to mice. The researchers also found that people born after 1918 have little or no immunity.

The team started the work at the highest level of containment, BSL-4, at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg. Then they decided the viruses were safe enough to handle at the next level down, and did the rest of the work across the border in a BSL-3Ag lab in Madison. The main difference between BSL-4 and BSL-3Ag is that precautions to ensure staff do not get infected are less stringent: while BSL-4 involves wearing fully enclosed body suits, those working at BSL-3Ag labs typically have half-suits.

Kawaoka told New Scientist that the decision to move down to BSL-3Ag was taken only after experiments at BSL-4 showed that giving mice the antiviral drug oseltamivir (Tamiflu) in advance prevented them getting sick. This means, he says, that if all lab workers take oseltamivir “they cannot become infected”.

.....

full story on site

 

[ramonmercado]

Scientists replicate deadly 1918 flu virus

Scientists replicate deadly 1918 flu virus


Scientists for the first time have reconstructed the 1918 Spanish influenza virus strain that caused the deadliest flu outbreak in history in an attempt to ward off another worldwide pandemic.


The Spanish flu outbreak killed as many as 50 million people at the time, and disease experts think another global flu pandemic is inevitable and due to emerge soon. Currently, public health officials are focusing their attention on a strain of avian flu spreading in Asia and Russia, because it appears to be very lethal to people, killing about 50 percent of those it infects.

Nations around the world have begun to stockpile flu medications and have rushed to manufacture a vaccine to fight the avian flu virus, known as H5N1, but so far the pathogen has not shown signs it has adapted to spread effectively from person to person, and only approximately 60 people have been killed by it.

Using a sample of the 1918 flu virus -- which was extracted from a victim who was buried and frozen in Alaskan permafrost -- a team of researchers led by Terrence Tumpey of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta used a technique known as reverse genetics to reconstruct the pathogen.

The technique, which they describe in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Science, involves the use of bacteria to splice together the eight genes of the flu virus with genetic material from another virus to make up for portions of the flu genome that are not available.

Combinations of the genes were then inserted into cell lines that could produce the reconstructed virus.

Tests in animal and human cells showed the virus is extremely virulent and capable of infecting several different species, which is unusual for typical strains of the virus that emerge each flu season. The 1918 virus caused rapid death in mice and chicken eggs and grew rapidly in human lung cells.

There is some good news as well. The flu-fighting drugs oseltamivir and amantadine have been shown to be effective against viruses containing some of the same genes found in the Spanish flu virus.

In addition, the scientists identified regions of the virus that account for its virulence that could be a key target for the development of drugs that could fight it off. These regions consist of a gene that codes for the hemagglutinin protein, or HA, that appeared to be involved in causing the severe lung damage reported in people who were infected with the 1918 flu strain and three other genes that code for enzymes known as polymerases that enable the virus to produce copies of itself.

"Given that HA is responsible for so much pathology in the lung, if we could identify the mechanism for how that happens and then block it, perhaps it would be useful for antiviral development," Tumpey said. "With the identification of the polymerase genes contributing to disease, that represents another set of genes that might also be a good target for prophylactic and therapeutic interventions," he said.

The researchers also reported that vaccines containing the Spanish flu HA gene protected mice.

The decision to both generate the deadly 1918 flu virus and publish the research article describing how it was done was made only after much consideration due to concerns that the virus could be leaked out or the information could be used for nefarious purposes. However, federal officials and other scientists agreed that its public health benefits outweighed the risk.

"We felt we had to recreate the virus and run these experiments to understand the biological properties that made the 1918 virus so exceptionally deadly," Tumpey said. "We wanted to identify the specific genes responsible for its virulence, with the hope of designing antivirals or other interventions that would work against virulent pandemic or epidemic influenza viruses," he added.

"We carefully considered the implications of publishing this research and concluded that the knowledge we're gaining to potentially protect public health far outweighs the risk of working with this virus," Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of the journal, said in a statement.

Kennedy noted that several federal officials arrived at the same conclusion, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a component of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, CDC Director Dr. Julie Gerberding and Dr. Amy Patterson, who is with the NIH and also serves as spokeswoman for the National Science Advisory Board for Biodefense.

The scientists said the reconstructed virus is kept under tight safeguards at the CDC.

Even in a typical year, influenza can be quite deadly, causing 36,000 deaths and more than 100,000 hospitalizations in the United States. In a separate study that appears in Nature, scientists reported another advance that may help stop the flu bug in its tracks. Scientists at The Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md., sequenced the genomes of 209 flu-virus samples from patients across New York from 1999 through 2004 to help determine how the virus changes over the course of several flu seasons.

"This study demonstrates that genomics can help us better track the flu virus and develop more effective vaccines," said Elodie Ghedin, who heads TIGR's viral genomics lab. "This is perhaps the most detailed snapshot scientists have gotten of flu's movement through communities."

Nearly all the samples consisted of a flu strain known as H3N2. The researchers identified three distinct variants of the H3N2 strain in the New Yorkers and found indications the variants frequently swapped genetic material, which is a concern because this can lead to new strains that may be more deadly or evade vaccines. Such a swapping phenomenon appears to have led to the formation of a strain last year that quickly spread around the globe but emerged too late to be included in the vaccine.

The genomic screening technique used by TIGR also may enable rapid assessment of the effectiveness of a given vaccine.

"Right in the middle of flu season, we could determine which influenza strains are present in the population, which ones are dominant, and how well a given vaccine works," Ghedin said.

http://www.hmnews.org/article2678.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Flu genome sequenced

Flu genome sequenced

Papers were published despite concerns the findings could aid bioterrorism
By Ishani Ganguli

The genome sequences of over 200 influenza A viruses reveal a much more diverse array of influenza strains—and greater potential for segment exchange between these strains—than was previously realized, researchers report in this week's Nature.

While it's long been known that the RNA-based influenza virus survives by rapidly evolving, the paper provides new insights into the degree of its variability and the mechanisms of its success, helping scientists design better ways of protecting against influenza, said Robert Belshe at the St. Louis University Center for Vaccine Development, who did not participate in the studies.

This report, which assessed genetic variations in the strains over a five year period, is one of a trio of papers about the flu virus published this week. The other two recreate and research the particularly virulent strain responsible for the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which killed all laboratory mice within 6 days. The findings have since been engulfed in controversy out of fear that the recreated strain might escape, or that the virulent strain's now publicly available genome, deposited in GenBank, might be used by hostile nations as a bioterrorism agent.

The findings raised enough concerns to inspire the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to call an emergency meeting with the journals' editors, after which officials agreed that the benefits of publication outweighed any risks. Still, the agency asked the authors to include statements in the papers about the safety precautions they took, and the importance of the research for public health.

At a press conference on Wednesday (October 4), Julie Gerberding, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which led the team that reconstructed the 1918 virus, assured that investigators took proper "precautions," and all work was carried out in an enhanced biosafety level-3 laboratory.

The Nature paper on the 1918 epidemic reveals the complete genome sequence of the responsible strain, while the Science paper reconstructs the virus to test its effects on mice. The third paper, also published in Nature, takes a broader look at influenza, studying the dynamic genetic landscape provided by over 200 whole genome sequences.

The results elucidate the mutation events—both during and in between flu seasons—that have helped render vaccines ineffective. These mutation events, in turn, may help researchers predict which strains will be most important to protect against next, according to final author Steven Salzberg at the University of Maryland in College Park.

For example, the researchers were able to show that a minor flu subpopulation, or clade, donated the haemaglutinin (HA) gene—encoding one of the two most immunogenic surface proteins—to what would become the dominant clade, in or before the spring of 2003. The "epidemiologically significant" result of this reassortment event was the Fujian-like strain that frequently eluded vaccination in the 2003-2004 flu season, according to the paper. "The flu was able to draw upon this pool of genetic diversity that it had, pull out a gene that is more adaptive, and go ahead with that," Salzberg told The Scientist.

The researchers used large-scale sequencing techniques on a set of 209 predominantly H3N2 influenza isolates collected in New York state over five years, with no preference towards particularly virulent strains. This technique provided a comprehensive, true-to-life picture of the virus's dynamic evolution and transmission patterns in the region, according to Salzberg. The approach reveals three clades even within this limited region, and shows "how quickly strains are moving around, emerging and disappearing," he said.

By studying the complex interplay of genetic material in these sequences, scientists may be better able to identify circulating influenza strains before they become public health threats, and scrutinize potentially important changes in internal genes. Earlier work largely focused only on HA and neuraminidase (NA) gene segments, which both encode surface proteins that make good vaccine targets.

"It's going to make the [vaccine development] process much more sophisticated, [since] we have a much more complete picture of what's happening," Belshe told The Scientist.

During the 2003-2004 flu season, for example, first author of the 209 sequences paper Elodie Ghedin at the Institute for Genomic Research said that researchers might have considered "both lineages in the design rather than focus on this dominant one" and then used reverse genetics to design the optimal vaccine.

The researchers also found mutations that may be important for receptor binding affinity and the efficiency of viral replication, suggesting the need for further investigation of their functional significance.

The authors of the Science paper found the HA gene in the 1918 strain to be essential for its high virulence.

The report about the 209 sequences is the first analysis of data from the ongoing Influenza Genome Sequencing Project, which is led by US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease; sequenced genomes are publicly available.

According to Belshe, scientists had historically thought that reassortment events were solely responsible for influenza pandemics, as they were in 1957 and 1968. But the complete sequence of the 1918 Spanish influenza strain demonstrates that it most likely evolved directly from the avian flu virus, providing a potential alternate mechanism for this threat that Belshe calls "quite alarming."

Jeffrey Taubenberger at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland, first author of the Nature paper on the 1918 epidemic, said at Tuesday's press conference that he and his colleagues have established the "theoretical framework of amino acid changes that we think are important, and the next part is to do the careful basic science to try to address the significance of these changes to allow the bird virus to become a human virus, and that's going to take some time."

http://www.the-scientist.com/news/20051006/02

Links for this article

E. Ghedin et al., "Large-scale sequencing of human influenza reveals the dynamic nature of viral genome evolution," Nature, October 5, 2005. http://www.nature.com
P. Hunter, "Outsmarting Influenza's Rapid Evolution," The Scientist, June 30, 2003. http://www.the-scientist.com/2003/6/30/31/1
Robert Belshe http://medschool.slu.edu/vaccine/index. ... at=faculty
National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity http://www.biosecurityboard.gov/
Julie Geberding http://www.cdc.gov/od/dirbio.htm
J.K. Taubenberger et al., "Characterization of the 1918 influenza virus polymerase genes," Nature October 6, 2005. http://www.nature.com
T. M. Tumpey et al., "Characterization of the Reconstructed 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic Virus," Science October 7, 2005. http://www.sciencemag.org
Steven Salzberg http://cbcb.umd.edu/~salzberg/
Elodie Ghedin http://www.tigr.org/faculty/Elodie_Ghedin.shtml
Jeffrey Taubenberger http://www.afip.org/Departments/cell/Mo ... ology.html

 

[WhistlingJack]

Flu 'could wipe out 62 million'

Flu 'could wipe out 62 million'

A global flu pandemic could kill 62 million people, experts have warned.

The 1918 pandemic claimed 50 million lives, and experts in The Lancet predict the toll today would be higher than this, despite medical advances.

The world's poorest nations would be hardest hit, fuelled by factors such as HIV and malaria infections, the Harvard University researchers believe.

Yet developing countries can least afford to prepare for a pandemic, which needs to be addressed, they say.

Lethal global flu epidemics tend to occur three or four times a century.

Some scientists believe a new one may be imminent and could be triggered by bird flu.

So far there have been only 258 cases of the latest strain of avian flu, H5N1, recorded in humans.

But the fear is that this strain could mutate and spread quickly and easily between people, triggering a deadly pandemic.

It is estimated between 50,000 and 700,000 people could die in the UK if such an event occurred.

To forecast how big the global death toll might be, Professor Christopher Murray and his team looked back at the events of the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic.

When they extrapolated the mortality rates then to the global population of 2004, they estimated 51-81 million people could die from a similarly severe outbreak and gave a median estimate of 62 million.

And 96% of these deaths would occur in the poorest countries, where there is overcrowding and access to medical care is limited, they predict.

Professor Murray warned: "The burden of the next influenza pandemic will be overwhelmingly focused in the developing world.

"Focusing on practical and affordable strategies for low-income countries where the pandemic will have the biggest effect is clearly prudent."

Dr Neil Ferguson, a UK flu expert at Imperial College London, St Mary's, said: "Access to vaccines, antivirals, and antibiotics for the most vulnerable populations is clearly part of the solution."

But he said it might be more pragmatic to focus on public health measures such as school closure, household quarantine and mask-wearing, although more evidence is needed to show if these can delay or reduce the effect of a pandemic.

"The evidence for non-medical interventions will be eagerly awaited," he added.

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/12/22 01:13:43 GMT

© BBC MMVI

 

[OldTimeRadio]

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994435

North American flu epidemic spreading

I don't want to come off as making too light of the subject, but how does this differ from other 'flu epidemics I've been through - especially 1953 and 1968? And those were pre-vaccine.

True, this seems to be an "early onset" season, but 'flu seasons are almost always that....early or late.

 

[feen5]

I suppose the one thing we can be sure of every year is the global epidemic scare story (Sars, Bird Flu). One year they will get it right but for the moment i won't be holding my breath.

 

[Mythopoeika]

Both the media and certain health professionals get whipped up into a frenzy every time there is a new flu epidemic, and they always quote the figures from 1918.

Frankly, it's all getting a bit old.

Back then, the medical services didn't have the resources or the technology to vaccinate lots of people - now they do. Now, people who are deemed to be 'at risk' are routinely vaccinated every year.

I think we need to stop panicking.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I've seen photographs from 1919 of coffins of 'Flu victims piled up outside US funeral homes, but don't know where these morbid shots were made. On or near the seacoasts, I assume, or possibly near the Great Lakes.

But here in Greater Cincinnati my Dad's extended family had but one death (my Great-Aunt Marie Wagner), while my Mom's even larger family had zero. And I think that was about average for the area.

 

[escargot]

Dealing with a serious 'flu epidemic might not be straightforward. The 1918 outbreak killed mainly healthy young adults rather than the groups you'd expect to succumb, such as those with existing medical conditions and the elderly.

Modern 'flu jabs are normally offered to exactly those groups who did not suffer badly in 1918 and so would not have saved them.

 

[GNC]

There was something in the newspaper today about a coughing virus currently hitting the UK and inundating the NHS phone helplines. I don't think anyone's died of it, though.

 

[crunchy5]

There was something in the newspaper today about a coughing virus currently hitting the UK and inundating the NHS phone helplines. I don't think anyone's died of it, though.

I've got it, inner shakes and a sluggish feeling along with the cough and phlegm.

 

[GNC]

There was something in the newspaper today about a coughing virus currently hitting the UK and inundating the NHS phone helplines. I don't think anyone's died of it, though.

I've got it, inner shakes and a sluggish feeling along with the cough and phlegm.

Get well soon! Try not to die!

 

[crunchy5]

There was something in the newspaper today about a coughing virus currently hitting the UK and inundating the NHS phone helplines. I don't think anyone's died of it, though.

I've got it, inner shakes and a sluggish feeling along with the cough and phlegm.

Get well soon! Try not to die!

No probs a couple of years ago I bought 100 Tamiflu from Canada, at only £60,000 so I'm sorted. :?

 

[OldTimeRadio]

The 1918 outbreak killed mainly healthy young adults rather than the groups you'd expect to succumb, such as those with existing medical conditions and the elderly.

Agreed. My Great-Aunt Marie Wagner, mentioned above, was only 22.

 

[Min Bannister]

There was something in the newspaper today about a coughing virus currently hitting the UK and inundating the NHS phone helplines. I don't think anyone's died of it, though.

Is there anything about it online? I think I must have had it since I had the most painful cough for about two weeks. I'm well now though and not dead either.

 

[Stormkhan]

Saw it on the GMTV news ( ) this morning. There's a bit of a lurghi going round: sore throat, dry cough, feeling like muck ... Just another (!) flu-like blem making the rounds.

Not the End-Of-The-World-Pandemic touted about.

 

[Min Bannister]

Saw it on the GMTV news ( ) this morning. There's a bit of a lurghi going round: sore throat, dry cough, feeling like muck ... Just another (!) flu-like blem making the rounds.

Not the End-Of-The-World-Pandemic touted about.

You mean I haven't just survived the End-Of-The-World Pandemic? Damn.

 

[Stormkhan]

Nice try. No cigar! Better luck, next media-led and uninformed health scare.

 

[tuckeg]

The flu of 1918 devastated many families.

1. Our family lost my grandfather and two of his brothers. They were in their late 20s and early 30s.

2. I was told a sad story a few years ago by a woman who was then approaching 100. In 1918 she was newly married and had just given birth to a son when her husband was strickened and died. She thought that she would spend the rest of her life alone since it was difficult for widows to remarry in those days, especially with a young child, and she sank into a deep depression. Her brother, who was a very popular person, told her that she should mourn for a year and then he would begin to bring her to social events with his friends and she would find someone new. She said he gave her a glimmer of hope and she began to think her life would not be so lonely. Two weeks later he also died of the flu. She never remarried. She passed on a couple of years ago just after her 100th birthday.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

....sore throat, dry cough, feeling like muck....

I've been fighting something very similar since just after Thanksgiving - the first malady of its sort I've had for the past seven or eight years.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Tuckeg, was this North America or the UK? There seem to have been great regional fluctuations in mortality rates, possibly with a relationship to distances from the sea.

Something similar held true even in the Black Death of 1347-1350. There was an extensive region of Central Europe which saw no Plague at all.

 

[QuaziWashboard]

....sore throat, dry cough, feeling like muck....

I've been fighting something very similar since just after Thanksgiving - the first malady of its sort I've had for the past seven or eight years.

Me too, since just before Christmas, which was a pain because I'm a singer in a band which had quite a few gigs to do over the holidays.

Just before Christmas my young daughter became very ill with what looked like a really bad flu. Nuralga, high temperature, dizzy, runny nose, couldn't keep any food down..ect...
The doctor said it was Gastro Intiritis (sp?) and said that she had had so many cases of it, she thought it might be some sort of local epidemic.
She prescribed plenty of full sugared cola (to replace lost energy) and ice pops (to cool her down and help re-hydrate her)
My daughter started to recover a day later and was in regular shape just in time for Christmas....and the doctor has gone up in her esteem too!! :lol:

 

[Beakmoo]

The flu of 1918 devastated many families.
2. I was told a sad story a few years ago by a woman who was then approaching 100. In 1918 she was newly married and had just given birth to a son when her husband was strickened and died. She thought that she would spend the rest of her life alone since it was difficult for widows to remarry in those days, especially with a young child, and she sank into a deep depression. Her brother, who was a very popular person, told her that she should mourn for a year and then he would begin to bring her to social events with his friends and she would find someone new. She said he gave her a glimmer of hope and she began to think her life would not be so lonely. Two weeks later he also died of the flu. She never remarried. She passed on a couple of years ago just after her 100th birthday.

God that's sad. My father's family in Ireland was destroyed by that epidemic too, when he was four. (He got his head stuck in a gate watching someone's funeral go past, he didn't know at the time it was his mother's funeral.) His father couldn't cope and he was sent to an army orphanage in Britain, where he was given a hard time for being Irish.
We think we have it bad in the 21st century, but most of us just have high expectations of life.

And Stormy, there's no such thing as flu-like, it's either flu or it ain't. Unless you're talking about Man-Flu, which is of course very serious indeed.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

She prescribed plenty of full sugared cola (to replace lost energy)....

I was very sick from tosillitis at age six or seven and couldn't keep any food down, not even broth.

I can still remember what the doctor said to my parents: "Give him all the Coke he wants. He CAN tolerate that."

 

[OneWingedBird]

Lethal secrets of 1918 flu virus

Scientists who recreated "Spanish flu" - the 1918 virus which killed up to 50m people - have witnessed its remarkable killing power first hand.

The lungs of infected monkeys were destroyed in just days as their immune systems went into overdrive after a Canadian laboratory rebuilt the virus.

The reason for the lethal nature of the 1918 flu was never fully understood.

But the experts behind this test say they have found a human gene which may help explain its unusual virulence.

They are hoping to help control any future pandemic and believe that the strain may hold clues that will help them.

Despite the large number of casualties at the time, doctors had no way to preserve tissue samples taken from infected patients, so researchers used an ingenious method to overcome this.

Frozen body

The preserved body of a flu victim buried in Alaskan permafrost was exhumed, and they painstakingly extracted the genetic material needed to work out the structure of the H1N1 virus.

Then, in a maximum "biosafety" facility at Canada's National Microbiology Laboratory they reconstructed a fully functioning virus, and infected macaque monkeys to see what would happen.

Writing in the journal Nature, they reported that the results were startling. Symptoms appeared within 24 hours of exposure to the virus, and the subsequent destruction of lung tissue was so widespread that, had the monkeys not been put to sleep a few days later, they would literally have drowned in their own blood.

The results match those seen when mice were infected in an earlier study and are very similar to those described in human patients at the time the virus was at its height.

Dangerous virus

Darwyn Kobasa, a research scientist with the Public Health Agency of Canada, and lead author of the research, defended the decision to recreate one of the most dangerous viruses in history.

He said: "This research provides an important piece in the puzzle of the 1918 virus, helping us to better understand influenza viruses and their potential to cause pandemics."

However, it is not the virus that is directly causing the damage to the lungs - it is the body's own response to infection.

Immune system proteins that can damage infected tissue were found at much higher levels following H1N1 infection compared with other viral infections.

Analysis at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UW) revealed that a key component of the immune system, a gene called RIG-1 appeared to be involved.

Levels of the protein produced by the gene were lower in tissue infected with the 1918 virus, suggesting it had a method of switching it off, causing immune defences to run wild.

This ability to alter the body's immune response is shared with the most recent candidate for mutation into a pandemic strain, the H5N1 avian flu.

Experts are worried that if the virus changes so that it can infect humans easily, it could again be far more lethal than normal seasonal flu.

"What we see with the 1918 virus in infected monkeys is also what we see with H5N1 viruses," said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who led the analysis at UW.

"Things may be happening at an early time point (in infection), but we may be able to step in and stop that reaction."

Preparing for pandemic

Dr Ronald Cutler, an infectious diseases researcher at the University of East London, said: "Knowing how that over stimulation takes place could lead to the development of new methods to treat these diseases so we are better prepared for any future pandemic."

Dr Jim Robertson from the UK's National Institute for Biological Standards and Control, said the decision to recreate the virus was justified.

"Many influenza virologists remain nervous about creating and experimenting with a reconstructed 1918 Spanish flu virus, an extremely dangerous virus which disappeared from the world long ago.

"However, it cannot be denied that the information that has been derived from this experiment is exciting and represents an important milestone in understanding the severity of these highly pathogenic types of influenza viruses."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6271833.stm

 

[OldTimeRadio]

Am I correct that infectious diseases can no longer be completely eradicated, as not very long ago we believed we had eliminated smallpox?

That is, can they be reconstructed "from the numbers"?

 

[TinFinger]

the worst thing about this is that they, in the future, could use this as a weapon.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

the worst thing about this is that they, in the future, could use this as a weapon.

I take it that's a "yes"? <g>

 

[TinFinger]

yes

it seems so
hence all the "can cure said disease with the knowlege of genetic" etc....
same tec can also be used to reconstruct/invent the exact opposite