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New Study Finds Flu Virus "Paralyzes" Immune System

Posted by timothy on from the now-that's-just-stunning dept.

mmmscience writes with this excerpt from Examiner.com: "A study coming out of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has found that the influenza virus manages to dysregulate the immune system, allowing other infections to thrive in the body. This discovery, coming at an opportune time as the world battles the new H1N1 flu outbreak, may be the first step in understanding why the flu can cause such high mortality rates in normally healthy individuals."

1 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mortality rates and the flu by Chlorine+Trifluoride · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Flu does hit them much harder, but the reason that the Spanish flu killed some many young, healthy people was because it launched a cytokine storm, something that was replicated in H5N1 (remember that?). So far, H1N1 does not seem to do this, although TFA suggests that it might.