Researchers at the National Institute of Health are studying the natural history of the H1N1 virus and comparing how people react to it versus a seasonal flu.
Doctor Jeffrey Taubenberger says even though some people did die from the H1N1 flu, what they've found is most people have a mild course of this flu and recover fully.
"Most of the people who have died have had serious, underlying medical issues, for example heart disease or cancer," explains NIH Infectious Diseases Researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Taubenberger.
Another thing researchers learned is more than half of the people who died, developed bacterial pneumonias after getting the flu.
"This is another important lesson that we've learned from the 1918 as well as the present that bacterial pneumonias are also a really important factor, so people who get severely ill with flu need to be watched for the development of a bacterial pneumonia and treated aggressively if that's the case," adds Taubenberger.
Taubenberger says the 1918 virus is the great-grandfather of the Swine Flu. This virus commonly known as the Spanish Flu killed about 50 million people in nine months.
"The 1918 flu actually gave rise to both strains of H1N1 that circulated in humans after 1918 and in pigs. And the two viruses then sort of went their separate ways. And the pig virus is still around and the human virus is still around, but somewhere along the way, the pig virus that thrived from the 1918 flu mixed some of its genes with another pig virus from Europe and that new pig virus is what has given rise to the pandemic virus."
Taubenberger says the work on these kinds of viruses improved with Molecular Biology.
"It's now possible for example to make infectious influenza obtain entirely from cloned genes. So it was possible for example to obtain the gene sequence from the 1918 virus, by fishing out tiny fragments of the viruses genes from the autopsy tissues of people who died back in 1918, in sort of like Jurassic Park kind of effort, piece together the genes and it was possible to rebuild the virus so we can actually study it in the laboratory," said Taubenberger.
Taubenberger also adds this same technology is allowing people to make vaccines to fight these viruses much faster. He says high containment laboratories like Rocky Mountain Labs allow people to work safely with these dangerous, infectious agents.
National Institute of Health Researchers researchers say they're trying to understand how the H1N1 virus behaves and causes disease.
Doctor Jeffrey Taubenberger says a pandemic is a rare event which happens about every 40 years, and that H1N1 is the first one we've seen since the 1968.
Taubenberger added that they do know that viruses start in wild birds, but what they don't know yet is how the viruses spread from the birds to other animals.
"Pigs seem to be able to be get infected with both bird viruses and human viruses and so pigs might be a so called mixing animal where these new viruses can be created," explains NIH Infectious Diseases Researcher, Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger.
Researchers are also trying to figure out is how influenza viruses spread from animals to people.
"It's sort of like predicting a tsunami. They're terrible events, we know they happen once in a while but at the moment we can't predict them we can only react to them. In this case this new pandemic emerged out of pigs in a way without any warning," said Dr. Taubenberger.
Taubenberger says the flu usually puts the elderly at more risk, but H1N1 is having the opposite effect, as most people getting sick with this flu are children and young adults.
"People who are over the age of 50, have probably been exposed to related viruses that circulated 15, 16 years ago for which when they were expose to them their body build up immunity and that immunity is still there," adds Taubenberger.
He added that this protective immunity may be keeping them from getting sick.
(from October 24, 2009)
An infectious disease researcher from the National Institute of Health presented some of his findings about influenza viruses in Hamilton on Friday evening.
Doctor Jeffrey Taubenberger says a pandemic happens about every 40 years and that the last one was back in 1965.
He added that researchers know for sure the influenza virus starts in birds, but what they don't know is how it spreads to other animals and humans.
Taubenberger says what they've seen so far is you can't eliminate influenza and it's hard to defend yourself against it. He added that as of right now, most of the H1N1 cases being reported are mild.
"We've found in autopsy studies that most of the people who have died have had serious underlying medical issues. For example, heart disease, or cancer, or some other serious medical issue that predisposes them to have a more serious outcome."
Rocky Mountain Labs, which is a component of the National Institute of Health, sponsored the presentation.
RML's spokesperson told us there were about 300 people on hand for Friday's talk at Hamilton High School.
