Spanish flu

The Spanish Flu Pandemic, also known as the Great Influenza Pandemic, the 1918 Flu Epidemic, and La Grippe, was an unusually severe and deadly strain of avian influenza, a viral infectious disease, that killed some 25 million to 50 million people worldwide in 1918 and 1919. It is thought to have been one of the most deadly pandemics so far in human history. It was caused by the H1N1 type of flu virus.

Recent research

In February, 1998 The Molecular Pathology Division of the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology recovered samples of the 1918 influenza from the frozen corpse of a Native Alaskan woman buried for nearly eight decades in permafrost near Brevig Mission, Alaska. Brevig Mission lost approximately eighty-five percent of its population to the Spanish flu in November, 1918. One of the four recovered samples contained viable genetic material of the 1918 virus. This sample provided scientists a first hand opportunity to study the virus, which was inactivated with guanidinium thiocyanate before transport. This sample and others found in AFIP archives allowed researchers to completely analyze the critical gene structures of the 1918 virus.

Related Topics:
February - 1998 - Molecular Pathology - Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Permafrost - Brevig Mission - Alaska - Guanidinium thiocyanate - Gene

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"We have now identified three cases: the Brevig Mission case and two archival cases that represent the only known sources of genetic material of the 1918 influenza virus," said Jeffery K.Taubenberger, MD, PhD, chief of the institute's molecular pathology division and principal investigator on the project.

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In September 2000, Noymer and Garenne published a study that poses an ætiological theory explaining the unusual W-shaped mortality age profile of the virus. This profile is characterized by a mode in the 25–34-year age group. Usually, influenza has a U-shaped profile, being most deadly to the young and the old. Additionally, after the pandemic the difference in life expectancy between men and women decreased (women had a historically longer life expectancy). Noymer and Garenne have causally linked these two anomalies with the predominantly-male mortality of tuberculosis.

Related Topics:
September - 2000 - ætiological - Mode - Life expectancy

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In October 2002, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology teamed up with a microbiologist from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. Together, they started to reconstruct the Spanish Flu. In an experiment, published in October 2002, they were successful in creating a virus with two 1918 genes. This virus was much more deadly to mice than other constructs containing genes from contemporary influenza virus. The experiments were conducted under high biosafety conditions at a laboratory of the US Department of Agriculture in Athens, Georgia.

Related Topics:
October - 2002 - Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Mount Sinai School of Medicine - US Department of Agriculture - Athens - Georgia

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In the February 6 2004, edition of Science magazine it was reported that two teams of researchers, one led by Sir John Skehel, director of the National Institute for Medical Research in London and another by Professor Ian Wilson of the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego had managed to synthesize the hemagglutinin protein responsible for the 1918 outbreak of Spanish Flu by piecing together DNA procured from a lung sample taken from the body of an Inuit woman buried in the Alaskan tundra and a number of preserved samples taken from American soldiers of the First World War. The two teams had analyzed the structure of the gene and discovered how subtle alterations to the shape of a protein molecule had allowed it to move from birds to humans with such devastating effects.

Related Topics:
February 6 - 2004 - Science magazine - National Institute for Medical Research - London - Scripps Research Institute - San Diego - Hemagglutinin - Protein - Inuit - Alaska - Tundra

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