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US-Japanese study finds genes for 1918 'Spanish flu' pandemic
AFP - 1 hour 41 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - A US-Japanese research team announced Monday it had isolated three genes that explain why the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the deadliest infectious disease in history, was so lethal.
The pandemic killed between 20 and 50 million people, more than all of World War I, which ended in November 1918, and spread around the world.
The genes allowed the virus to reproduce in lung tissue, according to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Conventional flu viruses replicate mainly in the upper respiratory tract: the mouth, nose and throat," said University of Wisconsin-Madison virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, who co-authored the study along with Masato Hatta, also of UW-Madison.
"The 1918 virus replicates in the upper respiratory tract, but also in the lungs," causing primary pneumonia among its victims," Kawaoka said.
"We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia," he added.
Autopsies of Spanish flu victims often revealed fluid-filled lungs severely damaged by massive hemorrhaging.
Virologists linked the virus' ability to invade the lungs with its high level of virulence, but the genes that conferred that ability were unknown, the researchers wrote.
The discovery of the three genes and how they help the virus infect the lungs is important because it could provide a way to quickly identify the potential virulence factors in new pandemic strains of influenza, Kawaoka said.
The genes could also lead to a new class of antiviral drugs to fight the spread of new pandemics, he added.
Other co-authors of the study include Shinji Watanabe, Jin Hyun Kim and Masato Hatta, also of UW-Madison, and Kyoko Shinya of Kobe University, in Japan.
The work was funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology and by grants-in-aid from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Japan.
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A screen at the Health Organisation headquarters displaying a 1918 picture of victims of the Spanish Flu. A US-Japanese research team announced Monday it had isolated three genes that explain why the 1918 Spanish flu, believed to be the deadliest infectious disease in history, was so lethal.
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