Searching for Lethal Influenza Strains

1gor writes "Scientists want to exhume the body of the victim of the world's most lethal influenza pandemic between 1918 and 1919 to examine the structure of the virus, reports Bloomberg.com. In an airtight coffin they expect to find well-preserved virus known for its unique ability to kill healthy young people. The strain's attack and mortality rates were highest among people aged between 20 years and 50 years. Are you scared already?"

Comments

'A' not 'The'

[Henry V .009]

Body of 'a' victim I expect. It killed more people than the world war.

Re:Why would I be scared?

[DeadSea]

With today's high-tech antibiotics, I seriously doubt an influenza epidemic could get very far.

A flu is caused by a virus. An antibiotic would be useless. The CDC says that you can vaccinate against flu, but there is little to do but rest and drink hot liquids once you have it.

Lethality

[4of12]

Reminds me of this readable account of Australian research into more effective mousepox strains.

Imagine an air-borne influenza with the same kind of engineered ability to agitate and misdirect the human immune system response. It would make the 1918 influenza look tame by comparison.

Thought this had been done already?

[Hubert_Shrump]

This states that there's already a sample out there that is currently being sequenced... Though the evidence off the page above is 404...

This is the fearful graph you're looking for.

Re:Thought this had been done already?

[gene_tailor]

Yes, you are right that samples that are believed to be from this influenza outbreak are already being studied. Samples have been isolated from fixed and frozen samples. Here is one example from Science 1997 Mar 21;275(5307):1793-6:

Initial genetic characterization of the 1918 "Spanish" influenza virus.

Taubenberger JK, Reid AH, Krafft AE, Bijwaard KE, Fanning TG.

The "Spanish" influenza pandemic killed at least 20 million people in 1918-1919, making it the worst infectious pandemic in history. Understanding the origins of the 1918 virus and the basis for its exceptional virulence may aid in the prediction of future influenza pandemics. RNA from a victim of the 1918 pandemic was isolated from a formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded, lung tissue sample. Nine fragments of viral RNA were sequenced from the coding regions of hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, nucleoprotein, matrix protein 1, and matrix protein 2. The sequences are consistent with a novel H1N1 influenza A virus that belongs to the subgroup of strains that infect humans and swine, not the avian subgroup.

A recombinant strain has also been created (under level 3 biosafety conditions) bearing the 1918 HA, NA, or M segments, and interestingly these strains were blocked in mice by currently available antiviral agents (reference =Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2002 Oct 15;99(21):13849-54).

little known

[Catskul]

While it is true that common antibiotics do not work on viruses, it is not true that all antibiotics only work on bacteria. There do exist some viral antibiotics (even for colds), but they are not the ones perscribed at your family doctor, and most of them are a recent development, and not very effective. (also some antibiotics work on fungi)

searching the following documents for "viral antibiotic" or simply "antibiotic" should give you the relevant information:
http://www.happybody.com/happybodycom/articlecold. htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onelife/health/sex/sti .shtml
http://www.explorers.org/newsfiles/archivefiles/sp anishflu.htm

Intrestingly enough, this last link is even related to the 1918 flu epidemic. It is about a project to exhume people who died of the spanish flu to study the virus, so apparently this is not the first time it has happened.

The Spanish Lady

[Guppy]

I had a little bird,
her name was Enza.
I opened the door,
and In-flew-Enza.

When the 1918 flu first broke out, it occurred during what was quite possibily the worst possible conditions for a it to occur. WWI was on, so large numbers of young people were being shipped all over the globe. At the same time, in many counteries the press was hobbled by wartime censorship, thus delaying the medical community's recognition of the pandemic's existence. The nickname of that the Flu was given, "The Spanish Lady" actually came about from Spain's status as a neutral nation during this time -- the press was able to speak freely, and so its existance was revealed there first.

The 1918 flu virus had a couple of interesting features. As the Bloomberg article mentions, it has an unusual ability to kill young adults. Basically, your typical influenza virus (and many diseases in general) have a U-shaped mortality curve -- highest among children and the elderly. However, this particular outbreak had a W-shaped curve, with a sudden spike right in the middle.

The reason for this mortality spike has long been a matter for conjecture. One feature of this particular flu outbreak was that it often killed suddenly, sometimes without warning, with victims also frequently showing presence of hemorrhage and edema in the lungs. This was so unusual that some have wondered if it was influenza at all -- after all, back then a virus was a mysterious "filterable agent", invisible to the most powerful optical microscopes. However, we do know from more modern research that a particularly large proportions of people who lived through that period have antibodies against a particular influenza type.

A theory is that the high lethality was not due just to the virus itself, but to an immune over-reaction (which would be strongest in young adults) which damaged the lungs. Other theories have suggested that perhaps the influenza outbreak was actually a co-epidemic, with some other agent also present -- another virus, a bacterium, even lungworms have been proposed. While it is likely that weakened victims often picked up secondary infections, evidence for an actual binary epidemic is weak.

Could the epidemic occur again if the strain were resurrected, or perhaps spontaneously put back together by the mutational drifts and re-arrangements that Influenza constantly is undergoing? Indeed, one of the questions is why hasn't it survived into the present? Some have suggested that perhaps the impact was large enough that humanity has been selected for greater resistance. Or perhaps features of the disease have since been incorporated into the various strains which still smolder today, producing a herd resistance which would be enough to prevent a major pandemic. Or maybe we've just been lucky, and it went extinct all by itself.

Either way, I think that even if it suddenly popped up, with all it's virulence intact, we're in much better shape today. We have a network that tracks the ebb and flow of flu epidemics every year, we have a spread of well-characterized vaccines (plus a new nasal spray vaccine coming soon), plus four different FDA-approved anti-virals for influenza. Even if it turned out to be something radically different -- and the historical antibody profiles previously mentioned suggest it's not.