BBC: 1918 flu virus's secrets revealed

28 September 2006


An experiment to reconstruct the deadly 1918 flu virus has given a new insight into how the infection took hold. Scientists discovered a severe immune system reaction was triggered when mice were infected with the recreated virus. The US team believes the extreme immune response could have provoked the body to begin killing its own cells, making the flu even deadlier. The study, published in Nature, may aid the hunt for new treatments. The 1918 pandemic took about 50 million lives.

Scientists in the US have reconstructed the H1N1 virus in a bid to better understand how it became such an effective killer - and to also bolster knowledge in the face of the current H5N1 bird flu threat. The researchers infected mice with the recreated influenza virus.

Paul Hunter, professor of health protection from the University of East Anglia, UK, said: "People who have died from the current form of bird flu have died in the same sort of fashion as the people who died during the 1918 pandemic. It is an extraordinarily unpleasant death. "Clearly, the difference between the virus now and the one around in 1918 is that the current one has yet to develop the ability to spread swiftly from person to person.

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