05-06-2009, 12:46 PM
07-10-2009, 05:37 PM
Swine flu's life cycle defies traditional patterns
Flu outbreaks are generally a winter problem. But the H1N1 virus is sticking around
-- and spreading -- even during the summertime.
BY FRED TASKER ftasker@MiamiHerald.com
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/story/1135278.html
Wasn't swine flu supposed to be winding down by now?
Well, it isn't. It's spreading faster. And there's a lot more of it around than official health department numbers tell us.
Broward County's official count of confirmed cases is 160. But its chief epidemiologist says the real number could be 20 to 100 times that many.
Miami-Dade's number is 603. The county's chief physician says the real number is much higher, and growing faster than before.
Even more puzzling: Regular flu tends to spread in the winter and wane in the summer. But swine flu shows no signs of slowing down in the United States, where it's summer, or in South America, where it's winter.
What's going on?
For starters, doctors say more than 90 percent of all flulike cases these days are swine flu, with regular seasonal flu nearly dormant. So they are being told not to bother sending most samples to county health departments for confirmation anymore. Broward's chief epidemiologist, Dr. John Livengood, estimates that only 2.5 percent of swine flu cases in his county are being confirmed and counted.
''Not everyone with flu symptoms is tested anymore,'' said Dr. Fermin Leguen, chief physician for the Miami-Dade Health Department.
County health officials investigate swine flu outbreaks mostly when there are a dozen or more cases at a prison or day camp, or if it involves infants or others at high risk, Leguen says.
It's true nationwide. The official swine flu count for the United States is 33,902. But Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calls the official number ''just the tip of the iceberg,'' and says the true national count is closer to one million cases.
The good news is that so far the swine flu is relatively mild. Of the 170 deaths in the U.S. so far, three-quarters were people with underlying conditions such as asthma, heart disease and so on. The even better news is that the virus doesn't seem to be mutating into a more virulent strain, making a more serious pandemic this fall and winter a bit less likely.
Why is swine flu growing in both Northern and Southern hemispheres? Dr. Gordon Dickinson, chief of infectious disease at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Health System, says it's because of the way flu is spread.
Flu usually grows in the winter, when people in most of the country spend more time indoors, crowded together, he says.
But swine flu is different.
``This is a totally new virus. So even though this is not the ideal time for it to spread, it's able to do so because it can find enough susceptible people who haven't built up immunity from having it before.''
Swine flu is worst among the young, especially those ages 5 to 14, and least contagious to those 60 and older. Dickinson believes it's because older people might have been exposed to flu epidemics in 1950s and 1960s and built up resistance to the virus.
Flu outbreaks are generally a winter problem. But the H1N1 virus is sticking around
-- and spreading -- even during the summertime.
BY FRED TASKER ftasker@MiamiHerald.com
http://www.miamiherald.com/living/story/1135278.html
Wasn't swine flu supposed to be winding down by now?
Well, it isn't. It's spreading faster. And there's a lot more of it around than official health department numbers tell us.
Broward County's official count of confirmed cases is 160. But its chief epidemiologist says the real number could be 20 to 100 times that many.
Miami-Dade's number is 603. The county's chief physician says the real number is much higher, and growing faster than before.
Even more puzzling: Regular flu tends to spread in the winter and wane in the summer. But swine flu shows no signs of slowing down in the United States, where it's summer, or in South America, where it's winter.
What's going on?
For starters, doctors say more than 90 percent of all flulike cases these days are swine flu, with regular seasonal flu nearly dormant. So they are being told not to bother sending most samples to county health departments for confirmation anymore. Broward's chief epidemiologist, Dr. John Livengood, estimates that only 2.5 percent of swine flu cases in his county are being confirmed and counted.
''Not everyone with flu symptoms is tested anymore,'' said Dr. Fermin Leguen, chief physician for the Miami-Dade Health Department.
County health officials investigate swine flu outbreaks mostly when there are a dozen or more cases at a prison or day camp, or if it involves infants or others at high risk, Leguen says.
It's true nationwide. The official swine flu count for the United States is 33,902. But Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, calls the official number ''just the tip of the iceberg,'' and says the true national count is closer to one million cases.
The good news is that so far the swine flu is relatively mild. Of the 170 deaths in the U.S. so far, three-quarters were people with underlying conditions such as asthma, heart disease and so on. The even better news is that the virus doesn't seem to be mutating into a more virulent strain, making a more serious pandemic this fall and winter a bit less likely.
Why is swine flu growing in both Northern and Southern hemispheres? Dr. Gordon Dickinson, chief of infectious disease at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and the Veterans Administration Health System, says it's because of the way flu is spread.
Flu usually grows in the winter, when people in most of the country spend more time indoors, crowded together, he says.
But swine flu is different.
``This is a totally new virus. So even though this is not the ideal time for it to spread, it's able to do so because it can find enough susceptible people who haven't built up immunity from having it before.''
Swine flu is worst among the young, especially those ages 5 to 14, and least contagious to those 60 and older. Dickinson believes it's because older people might have been exposed to flu epidemics in 1950s and 1960s and built up resistance to the virus.
07-11-2009, 10:40 AM
The 1918 Flu crisis was a form of the Swine Flu. It wasn't a single round, it was actually THREE rounds: The first round didn't do a lot of damage, much like the round of Swine Flu we're seeing right now. But, in 1918, when it came back around the second time it was a mutated form that was fatal: Millions of people died everywhere. Then it came back around yet again, further mutated, for a third round, which was still deadly; worse than the first round but not quite as bad as the second round.
I'd say it's better to be safe than sorry and learn from the 1918 situation: This round may be just a milder round, be prepared just in case it comes back again with a bigger wollop.
Prepare for quarantine. Be sure you have enough food, water, hygeine and medicinal supplies. Prepare for anything. I'm not trying to promote doomsday here, but 1918 showed us something we should seriously consider. [/i]
It's better to be prepared and not need it, rather than to need it and not be prepared.
I'd say it's better to be safe than sorry and learn from the 1918 situation: This round may be just a milder round, be prepared just in case it comes back again with a bigger wollop.
Prepare for quarantine. Be sure you have enough food, water, hygeine and medicinal supplies. Prepare for anything. I'm not trying to promote doomsday here, but 1918 showed us something we should seriously consider. [/i]
It's better to be prepared and not need it, rather than to need it and not be prepared.
07-11-2009, 11:38 AM
US Swine Outbreak Is An
'Influenza'? Not So Fast :detective:
By Lawrence Broxmeyer MD
5-7-9 http://rense.com/general85/uswine.htm
Medical researcher/physician Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, lead investigator in a Journal of Infectious Diseases study, has a message for the officials and scientists of WHO and the CDC: There is more to flu-like illness than either "Influenza" or "H1N1".
"There have been about three influenza pandemics in each century for the last 300 years", points out Lawrence Broxmeyer MD . "Yet when the horrendous H1N1 1918 pandemic first got national attention in America in April, 1918, authorities didn't even considered Influenza or "the Flu" lethal enough to be a reportable disease."
Yet ironically, this very 1918 "Influenza" strain itself held clinical and epidemiologic similarities to the influenza pandemics of 1889, 1847, and even earlier. So it can be easily understood why some experts, from 1918 to the present, validly question how such an explosively fatal disease could have been or is presently caused by "Influenza".
Even Lancet, one of the most prominent medical journals in the world, calls the Mexican epidemic "flu-like" because frankly we do not have enough facts or verification in to call it anything else.
No one can deny the similarities between the onset of the 1918 epidemic and that of today. Yet a Press Release, issued on August 19, 2008, by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), contains a striking finding and conclusion: The 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide from the great 1918 Influenza ("Flu") Pandemic were NOT due to "flu" or a virus, but to pneumonia caused by massive bacterial infection.
In 2000 Dr. Andrew Noymer and Michel Garenne, UC Berkeley demographers, reported convincing statistics showing that undetected tuberculosis may have been the real killer in the 1918 flu epidemic. Although scientists have recently spun that a "new" strain of "Influenza" strikes healthy young people, flu traditionally attacks the old and the infirm. The 1918 killer, on the other hand, went after men and women in their prime, between 20-40, prime ages for a TB onslaught. Flu didn't traditionally show the male preference recorded in 1918. TB did. With TB routinely, there was extremely low mortality between the ages of 5 and 15, also reflected in 1918. Besides, Noymer pointed out, Influenza typically came in the winter, this one began in the late spring and summer. The first autopsy of a 1918 pandemic victim occurred in Chicago in April, the very same month that the Mexican swine "flu" came to our attention .This mystery 1918 disease would subside, but come back in the fall with a vengeance.
Yet, Gorgas, Head of the US Army Medical Corp. at that time, insisted on referencing it as ''Influenza'', an old and heretofore not that deadly disease. Furthermore, argued Noymer, flu traditionally gave mild to moderate fever, but in the 1918 pandemic, patients could spike to 105 or 106 degrees, not uncharacteristic for an acute attack of tuberculosis.
And so, Noymer and Garenne, aware of recent attempts to isolate the "Influenza virus" on human cadavers and their specimens, nevertheless concluded that: "Frustratingly, these findings have not answered the question why the 1918 virus was so virulent, nor do they offer an explanation for the unusual age profile of deaths".
"By 1918", Lawrence Broxmeyer, MD continued, "it could be said, in so far as tuberculosis was concerned, that the world was a supersaturated sponge ready to ignite and that among its most vulnerable parts was the very Midwest where the 1918 unknown pandemic began. A critical mass, much like the Mexican experience, had been reached. It is theorized that the lethal pig epidemic that began in 1918 Kansas just prior to the first human outbreak was a disease of avian and human tuberculosis genetically combined through mycobacteriophage interchange, with the pig susceptible to both, and as its involuntary living culture medium." This to is much like the inception of the Mexican epidemic."
'Influenza'? Not So Fast :detective:
By Lawrence Broxmeyer MD
5-7-9 http://rense.com/general85/uswine.htm
Medical researcher/physician Lawrence Broxmeyer MD, lead investigator in a Journal of Infectious Diseases study, has a message for the officials and scientists of WHO and the CDC: There is more to flu-like illness than either "Influenza" or "H1N1".
"There have been about three influenza pandemics in each century for the last 300 years", points out Lawrence Broxmeyer MD . "Yet when the horrendous H1N1 1918 pandemic first got national attention in America in April, 1918, authorities didn't even considered Influenza or "the Flu" lethal enough to be a reportable disease."
Yet ironically, this very 1918 "Influenza" strain itself held clinical and epidemiologic similarities to the influenza pandemics of 1889, 1847, and even earlier. So it can be easily understood why some experts, from 1918 to the present, validly question how such an explosively fatal disease could have been or is presently caused by "Influenza".
Even Lancet, one of the most prominent medical journals in the world, calls the Mexican epidemic "flu-like" because frankly we do not have enough facts or verification in to call it anything else.
No one can deny the similarities between the onset of the 1918 epidemic and that of today. Yet a Press Release, issued on August 19, 2008, by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), contains a striking finding and conclusion: The 20 to 40 million deaths worldwide from the great 1918 Influenza ("Flu") Pandemic were NOT due to "flu" or a virus, but to pneumonia caused by massive bacterial infection.
In 2000 Dr. Andrew Noymer and Michel Garenne, UC Berkeley demographers, reported convincing statistics showing that undetected tuberculosis may have been the real killer in the 1918 flu epidemic. Although scientists have recently spun that a "new" strain of "Influenza" strikes healthy young people, flu traditionally attacks the old and the infirm. The 1918 killer, on the other hand, went after men and women in their prime, between 20-40, prime ages for a TB onslaught. Flu didn't traditionally show the male preference recorded in 1918. TB did. With TB routinely, there was extremely low mortality between the ages of 5 and 15, also reflected in 1918. Besides, Noymer pointed out, Influenza typically came in the winter, this one began in the late spring and summer. The first autopsy of a 1918 pandemic victim occurred in Chicago in April, the very same month that the Mexican swine "flu" came to our attention .This mystery 1918 disease would subside, but come back in the fall with a vengeance.
Yet, Gorgas, Head of the US Army Medical Corp. at that time, insisted on referencing it as ''Influenza'', an old and heretofore not that deadly disease. Furthermore, argued Noymer, flu traditionally gave mild to moderate fever, but in the 1918 pandemic, patients could spike to 105 or 106 degrees, not uncharacteristic for an acute attack of tuberculosis.
And so, Noymer and Garenne, aware of recent attempts to isolate the "Influenza virus" on human cadavers and their specimens, nevertheless concluded that: "Frustratingly, these findings have not answered the question why the 1918 virus was so virulent, nor do they offer an explanation for the unusual age profile of deaths".
"By 1918", Lawrence Broxmeyer, MD continued, "it could be said, in so far as tuberculosis was concerned, that the world was a supersaturated sponge ready to ignite and that among its most vulnerable parts was the very Midwest where the 1918 unknown pandemic began. A critical mass, much like the Mexican experience, had been reached. It is theorized that the lethal pig epidemic that began in 1918 Kansas just prior to the first human outbreak was a disease of avian and human tuberculosis genetically combined through mycobacteriophage interchange, with the pig susceptible to both, and as its involuntary living culture medium." This to is much like the inception of the Mexican epidemic."
07-11-2009, 01:25 PM
Thanks for that info, freyd,(Nice to 'see' you too!)
Last night on the news I caught the end of something - they were saying this flu is "causing" TB. And I thought - that's ridiculous, the flu causing Tuberculosis?!
"It is theorized that the lethal pig epidemic that began in 1918 Kansas just prior to the first human outbreak was a disease of avian and human tuberculosis genetically combined through mycobacteriophage interchange, with the pig susceptible to both, and as its involuntary living culture medium." This too is much like the inception of the Mexican epidemic."
That makes sense. :shocked:Yikes!
Build up your immune systems, dear friends - I'll post some links later with some info on how to do that. ;)
:peace:
Last night on the news I caught the end of something - they were saying this flu is "causing" TB. And I thought - that's ridiculous, the flu causing Tuberculosis?!
"It is theorized that the lethal pig epidemic that began in 1918 Kansas just prior to the first human outbreak was a disease of avian and human tuberculosis genetically combined through mycobacteriophage interchange, with the pig susceptible to both, and as its involuntary living culture medium." This too is much like the inception of the Mexican epidemic."
That makes sense. :shocked:Yikes!
Build up your immune systems, dear friends - I'll post some links later with some info on how to do that. ;)
:peace:
07-13-2009, 07:12 PM
Swine flu strikes Downing Street – and almost reaches G8 summit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul...ael-jacobs
The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown's senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L'Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8's leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown's entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jul...ael-jacobs
The first case of swine flu has struck Downing Street and it nearly caused a diplomatic crisis.
Gordon Brown's senior climate change adviser Michael Jacobs was banned from attending the G8 summit in Italy for fear he would pass the contagious disease to Barack Obama and other world leaders.
It is understood that Jacobs contracted the disease while involved in climate change talks in Mexico.
He had travelled to Rome for some preliminary negotiations on the draft of the G8 communique text, and was told by his personal doctor that he was no longer suffering from the disease. He then planned to travel to the conference site in L'Aquila, Italy, but was told by Brown that he could not risk him going.
The prime minister told Jacobs it would be diplomatically disastrous if Britain was responsible for infecting the G8's leaders. Instead, Jacobs followed negotiations by phone.
A Downing Street source said there was no evidence that anyone else in Brown's entourage has contracted swine flu and that if they had, proper procedures for decontamination will be followed.
07-15-2009, 06:07 AM
Although some think the virus started in Fort Riley Kansas, other virologists suggested that a principal British troop staging camp in Étaples, France was at the center of the 1918 flu pandemic or at least a significant precursor virus to it. There had been a mysterious respiratory infection at the military base during the winter of 1915-16.
Mustard Gas had been used during the war and it is possible that something that damaged and weakened the lungs enabled a virus to take hold and mutate.
T.B. is bacterial, influenza is viral. Either the compromised immune system is now susceptible to the bacteria, or the viral shell has included some of the TB RNA (highly unlikely).
People coming from African countries who are HIV positive often carry TB as well, due to their compromised immune system. They have reintroduced the occurrence of a nearly wiped out disease.
Influenza viruses are RNA strands in a protein casing. RNA is like half the DNA spiral, and enables viruses to mutate quickly they also contain reverse transcriptase which enables them to build the DNA again. They are like retro viruses.
vicky
Mustard Gas had been used during the war and it is possible that something that damaged and weakened the lungs enabled a virus to take hold and mutate.
T.B. is bacterial, influenza is viral. Either the compromised immune system is now susceptible to the bacteria, or the viral shell has included some of the TB RNA (highly unlikely).
People coming from African countries who are HIV positive often carry TB as well, due to their compromised immune system. They have reintroduced the occurrence of a nearly wiped out disease.
Influenza viruses are RNA strands in a protein casing. RNA is like half the DNA spiral, and enables viruses to mutate quickly they also contain reverse transcriptase which enables them to build the DNA again. They are like retro viruses.
vicky
07-15-2009, 06:50 AM
Dont believe the hype!
Eat wholefoods, drink plenty of water, take mineral salts, cut out meats, sugary processed foods, get some sunshine, fresh air, laugh heaps and be around people who care about you - if you have a partner, make plently of good "luvin" -- if you dont have a partner, flog yourself.
Either way, if you do all of the above -- the swine flu, or any other flu, will not be able to breed within your body.
Cheers! :friends:
Eat wholefoods, drink plenty of water, take mineral salts, cut out meats, sugary processed foods, get some sunshine, fresh air, laugh heaps and be around people who care about you - if you have a partner, make plently of good "luvin" -- if you dont have a partner, flog yourself.
Either way, if you do all of the above -- the swine flu, or any other flu, will not be able to breed within your body.
Cheers! :friends:
07-15-2009, 12:30 PM
1918 Pandenic H1N1 Human/Swine Recombination
Recombinomics Commentary 14:41
July 14, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/071409...Swine.html
It has become almost common wisdom that the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic was an avian strain introduced into the human population shortly before the pandemic erupted. But a new study disputes that hypothesis, arguing instead that genes of the 1918 virus had circulated in mammalian hosts, most likely pigs and humans, for several years before 1918.
The origins of the 1918 virus, which is estimated to have killed at least 20 million people, are still controversial. After painstakingly piecing together the genome of the extinct strain, a team led by virologist Jeffery Taubenberger, then at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., concluded in 2005 that the virus most closely resembled viruses of avian origin; the team suggested it had become transmissible between humans after a couple of key changes
The above comments on the recent PNAS paper as well as the Nature paper in 2005 provides some background on the data supporting a human / swine origin of 1918. The sequence of a 1917 avian isolate clearly demonstrated that avian sequences in 1917 were similar to current avian sequences and easily distinguished from mammalian sequences, such as pandemic 1918 H1N1, seasonal H1N1 and swine H1N1.
The Nature paper of 2005 identified 10 polymorphisms which were said to be pandemic -specific because they were in the 1918 pandemic sequence but not avian sequences. However, these markers were simply mammalian markers and were not only in the H1N1 1918 pandemic sequence but also in seasonal H1N1 and swine H1N1. Thus, the markers did not identify changes that created a pandemic strain, but instead provided additional data supporting a human / swine origin of 1918, as had been seen from phylogenetic analysis.
The swine origin is also supported by the recent Nature paper showing that sera from patients alive in 1918 had antibodies that not only saw the 1918 pandemic H1N1 strain, but also the current 2009 pandemic strain which is a swine H1N1. Thus, both the antibody data as well as phylogenetic analysis support a mammalian (human and swine) origin of 1918.
However, detailed analysis of the 8 gene segments of the 1918 virus show that it is a recombinant with alternating blocks of swine and human polymorphisms. In fact approximately 90% of the polymorphisms in each of the eight gene segments can be found in two parental sequences, WSN/33 representing human H1N1 and swine/Iowa/15/1931 representing swine H1N1. Although there are some avian polymorphisms, the vast majority of polymorphisms is mammalian and can in fact be found in two isolates from the early 1930's.
These data have important implications for the current pandemic strain, because it is a swine H1N1 which can efficiently transmit in humans. It has spread throughout the human population worldwide, and now is in position for further adaptation to human host via recombination with seasonal H1N1, which is well adapted to humans.
There are several obvious candidates in seasonal H1N1 which could significantly impact swine H1N1. One of the 10 markers identified in the 2005 Nature paper was PB2 E627K. This polymorphism is in virtually all influenza A seasonal flu isolates. It allows for most efficient replication at 33 C, which leads to upper respiratory infections and a preference for seasonal spread, when cold temperatures keep the human nose close to the optimal temperature for E627K. In contrast, the avian version, E627, allows for most efficient replication at 41 C, the body temperature of birds. Since the swine H1N PB2 is avian, it has E627, which may lead to less efficient transmission in the winter, but higher transmission in the summer, and associated replication the lower respiratory tract. E627K was reported in one isolate in Shanghai but was only found in the sequences from the original sample as well as the first clone. The second clone had reverted back to E627.
Another potential acquisition from seasonal H1N1 is H274Y. Although this isn't a mammalian specific polymorphisms, it is present on almost 100% of seasonal H1N1 and has a history of jumping from one genetic background to another. It has been reported in three pandemic swine isolates, including a patient traveling from San Francisco to Hong Kong who had not received oseltamivir, raising concerns of a fit pandemic H1N1 with H274Y. Moreover, this isolate and other related isolates without H274Y also have a receptor binding domain change D225E, which may be important in establishing dominance via genetic hitching. A change at the same position, D225N, was associated with the establishment of H3N2 seasonal flu with adamantane resistance, S31N.
Thus, the movement of swine H1N1 into the human population creates the environment for rapid adaptation to human hosts and the acquisition of key polymorphisms from seasonal H1N1, which could cause significant problems in the upcoming months.
Recombinomics Commentary 14:41
July 14, 2009
http://www.recombinomics.com/News/071409...Swine.html
It has become almost common wisdom that the virus that caused the 1918 flu pandemic was an avian strain introduced into the human population shortly before the pandemic erupted. But a new study disputes that hypothesis, arguing instead that genes of the 1918 virus had circulated in mammalian hosts, most likely pigs and humans, for several years before 1918.
The origins of the 1918 virus, which is estimated to have killed at least 20 million people, are still controversial. After painstakingly piecing together the genome of the extinct strain, a team led by virologist Jeffery Taubenberger, then at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington, D.C., concluded in 2005 that the virus most closely resembled viruses of avian origin; the team suggested it had become transmissible between humans after a couple of key changes
The above comments on the recent PNAS paper as well as the Nature paper in 2005 provides some background on the data supporting a human / swine origin of 1918. The sequence of a 1917 avian isolate clearly demonstrated that avian sequences in 1917 were similar to current avian sequences and easily distinguished from mammalian sequences, such as pandemic 1918 H1N1, seasonal H1N1 and swine H1N1.
The Nature paper of 2005 identified 10 polymorphisms which were said to be pandemic -specific because they were in the 1918 pandemic sequence but not avian sequences. However, these markers were simply mammalian markers and were not only in the H1N1 1918 pandemic sequence but also in seasonal H1N1 and swine H1N1. Thus, the markers did not identify changes that created a pandemic strain, but instead provided additional data supporting a human / swine origin of 1918, as had been seen from phylogenetic analysis.
The swine origin is also supported by the recent Nature paper showing that sera from patients alive in 1918 had antibodies that not only saw the 1918 pandemic H1N1 strain, but also the current 2009 pandemic strain which is a swine H1N1. Thus, both the antibody data as well as phylogenetic analysis support a mammalian (human and swine) origin of 1918.
However, detailed analysis of the 8 gene segments of the 1918 virus show that it is a recombinant with alternating blocks of swine and human polymorphisms. In fact approximately 90% of the polymorphisms in each of the eight gene segments can be found in two parental sequences, WSN/33 representing human H1N1 and swine/Iowa/15/1931 representing swine H1N1. Although there are some avian polymorphisms, the vast majority of polymorphisms is mammalian and can in fact be found in two isolates from the early 1930's.
These data have important implications for the current pandemic strain, because it is a swine H1N1 which can efficiently transmit in humans. It has spread throughout the human population worldwide, and now is in position for further adaptation to human host via recombination with seasonal H1N1, which is well adapted to humans.
There are several obvious candidates in seasonal H1N1 which could significantly impact swine H1N1. One of the 10 markers identified in the 2005 Nature paper was PB2 E627K. This polymorphism is in virtually all influenza A seasonal flu isolates. It allows for most efficient replication at 33 C, which leads to upper respiratory infections and a preference for seasonal spread, when cold temperatures keep the human nose close to the optimal temperature for E627K. In contrast, the avian version, E627, allows for most efficient replication at 41 C, the body temperature of birds. Since the swine H1N PB2 is avian, it has E627, which may lead to less efficient transmission in the winter, but higher transmission in the summer, and associated replication the lower respiratory tract. E627K was reported in one isolate in Shanghai but was only found in the sequences from the original sample as well as the first clone. The second clone had reverted back to E627.
Another potential acquisition from seasonal H1N1 is H274Y. Although this isn't a mammalian specific polymorphisms, it is present on almost 100% of seasonal H1N1 and has a history of jumping from one genetic background to another. It has been reported in three pandemic swine isolates, including a patient traveling from San Francisco to Hong Kong who had not received oseltamivir, raising concerns of a fit pandemic H1N1 with H274Y. Moreover, this isolate and other related isolates without H274Y also have a receptor binding domain change D225E, which may be important in establishing dominance via genetic hitching. A change at the same position, D225N, was associated with the establishment of H3N2 seasonal flu with adamantane resistance, S31N.
Thus, the movement of swine H1N1 into the human population creates the environment for rapid adaptation to human hosts and the acquisition of key polymorphisms from seasonal H1N1, which could cause significant problems in the upcoming months.
07-15-2009, 01:27 PM
freyd Wrote:
The swine origin is also supported by the recent Nature paper showing that sera from patients alive in 1918 had antibodies that not only saw the 1918 pandemic H1N1 strain, but also the current 2009 pandemic strain which is a swine H1N1. Thus, both the antibody data as well as phylogenetic analysis support a mammalian (human and swine) origin of 1918.
Which all goes to confirm that our closest ancestral cousins were pigs. :piggy:
07-15-2009, 02:32 PM
[/b]
smoldering wick Wrote:
freyd Wrote:
The swine origin is also supported by the recent Nature paper showing that sera from patients alive in 1918 had antibodies that not only saw the 1918 pandemic H1N1 strain, but also the current 2009 pandemic strain which is a swine H1N1. Thus, both the antibody data as well as phylogenetic analysis support a mammalian (human and swine) origin of 1918.
Which all goes to confirm that our closest ancestral cousins were pigs. :piggy:
Good morning bros Freyd and SW:
A picture is worth a thousand words!!!:D Thanx for the info as we all keep on the watch.
Much Christian Love to ALL :grouphug::heartbeat:
sis
07-16-2009, 05:58 AM
Yes, and George Orwell, therefore, had tremendous insight!
smoldering wick Wrote:
freyd Wrote:
The swine origin is also supported by the recent Nature paper showing that sera from patients alive in 1918 had antibodies that not only saw the 1918 pandemic H1N1 strain, but also the current 2009 pandemic strain which is a swine H1N1. Thus, both the antibody data as well as phylogenetic analysis support a mammalian (human and swine) origin of 1918.
Which all goes to confirm that our closest ancestral cousins were pigs. :piggy:
07-19-2009, 06:59 PM
July 15, 2009 2:20 PM
No time for wishful thinking on swine flu
Debora MacKenzie, consultant
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shorts...tanti.html[/u]
Well, it was predictable: swine flu is starting to really take off in Britain, and confusion -- about who has died, or will die, and when we can expect some vaccine -- is rife. Some crossed wires are natural as journalists who don't usually cover the medical beat face a new and scary situation.
But it sometimes seems as though the people in charge are more worried about public panic than they are about the virus, and will say anything to calm people down. Britain of all countries should know this tends to create more disquiet in the long run, not less.
Britain got the H1N1 virus sooner and bigger than any other country outside the Americas, and as the deaths of children and previously healthy people hit the news, public anxiety is increasing - although anyone who reads New Scientist knew to expect both.
That's no reason to make things seem worse than they are. Yesterday scientists at Imperial College London said they can't tell how deadly the virus is now, but guessed that it might kill one in two hundred cases severe enough to go to hospital.
The BBC applied that to the 100,000 cases a day British officials have predicted by August if the epidemic keeps rising as it has so far, and came up with 500 deaths a day. :shocked:
That "one in 200" was meant to apply only to hospitalised cases, not all of them. In any case 100,000 per day may also be unduly pessimistic. Chalk one up to crossed wires.
No time for wishful thinking on swine flu
Debora MacKenzie, consultant
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shorts...tanti.html[/u]
Well, it was predictable: swine flu is starting to really take off in Britain, and confusion -- about who has died, or will die, and when we can expect some vaccine -- is rife. Some crossed wires are natural as journalists who don't usually cover the medical beat face a new and scary situation.
But it sometimes seems as though the people in charge are more worried about public panic than they are about the virus, and will say anything to calm people down. Britain of all countries should know this tends to create more disquiet in the long run, not less.
Britain got the H1N1 virus sooner and bigger than any other country outside the Americas, and as the deaths of children and previously healthy people hit the news, public anxiety is increasing - although anyone who reads New Scientist knew to expect both.
That's no reason to make things seem worse than they are. Yesterday scientists at Imperial College London said they can't tell how deadly the virus is now, but guessed that it might kill one in two hundred cases severe enough to go to hospital.
The BBC applied that to the 100,000 cases a day British officials have predicted by August if the epidemic keeps rising as it has so far, and came up with 500 deaths a day. :shocked:
That "one in 200" was meant to apply only to hospitalised cases, not all of them. In any case 100,000 per day may also be unduly pessimistic. Chalk one up to crossed wires.
07-24-2009, 12:49 PM
Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent in 2 years - AP
By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_o..._swine_flu
ATLANTA – U.S. health officials say swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren't successful.
Those estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mean about twice the number of people who usually get sick in a normal flu season would be struck by swine flu. Officials said those projections would drop if a new vaccine is ready and widely available, as U.S. officials expect.
The U.S. may have as many as 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October, and U.S. tests of the new vaccine are to start shortly, federal officials said this week.
The infection estimates are based on a flu pandemic from 1957, which killed nearly 70,000 in the United States but was not as severe as the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. But influenza is notoriously hard to predict. The number of deaths and illnesses would drop if the pandemic peters out or if efforts to slow its spread are successful, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.
A CDC official said the agency came up with the estimate last month, but it was first disclosed in an interview with The Associated Press.
"Hopefully, mitigation efforts will have a big impact on future cases," Skinner said.
In a normal flu season, about 36,000 people die from flu and its complications, according to American Medical Association estimates. Because so many more people are expected to catch the new flu, the number of deaths over two years could range from 90,000 to several hundred thousand, the CDC calculated. Again, that is if a new vaccine
By MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer Mike Stobbe,
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090724/ap_o..._swine_flu
ATLANTA – U.S. health officials say swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren't successful.
Those estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mean about twice the number of people who usually get sick in a normal flu season would be struck by swine flu. Officials said those projections would drop if a new vaccine is ready and widely available, as U.S. officials expect.
The U.S. may have as many as 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October, and U.S. tests of the new vaccine are to start shortly, federal officials said this week.
The infection estimates are based on a flu pandemic from 1957, which killed nearly 70,000 in the United States but was not as severe as the infamous Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19. But influenza is notoriously hard to predict. The number of deaths and illnesses would drop if the pandemic peters out or if efforts to slow its spread are successful, said CDC spokesman Tom Skinner.
A CDC official said the agency came up with the estimate last month, but it was first disclosed in an interview with The Associated Press.
"Hopefully, mitigation efforts will have a big impact on future cases," Skinner said.
In a normal flu season, about 36,000 people die from flu and its complications, according to American Medical Association estimates. Because so many more people are expected to catch the new flu, the number of deaths over two years could range from 90,000 to several hundred thousand, the CDC calculated. Again, that is if a new vaccine
07-30-2009, 11:09 AM
Military to Deploy on U.S. Soil to "Assist" with Pandemic Outbreak
Thursday, July 30, 2009
by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
http://www.naturalnews.com/026732_milita...break.html
(NaturalNews) Until now, what I'm about to tell you would have been easily dismissed as a conspiracy theory. It's the kind of story that you might expect from some extreme fringe blogger... the kind of story that never appears in the mainstream media. Only today, it did. And it's not a conspiracy theory, either.
CNN is reporting this evening that the U.S. military is gearing up to get involved in the H1N1 swine flu outbreak widely expected to strike the U.S. this fall. As CNN reports, "The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials." (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/2...)
When it comes to the U.S. military, the word "assist," of course, could mean almost anything. Typically, the U.S. military offers assistance at the end of a rifle. This "assistance" could mean assisting with quarantines, assisting with rounding up infected people or assisting with arresting and imprisoning people who resist vaccine shots.
Just to make it even more interesting, this operation will include "personnel from all branches of the military" and it will involve cooperation with FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA is the group of geniuses who handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They're the ones who confiscated firearms from law-abiding citizens defending their own homes, then thrust people into toxic temporary housing that caused neurological symptoms and breathing problems.
Internationally, FEMA is known as the Federal Emergency Laughing Stock Administration. But now, with H1N1 swine flu, FEMA will be backed by the power of highly-trained, heavily-armed military personnel.
Imagine one possible future in America...
http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/
Thursday, July 30, 2009
by: Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
http://www.naturalnews.com/026732_milita...break.html
(NaturalNews) Until now, what I'm about to tell you would have been easily dismissed as a conspiracy theory. It's the kind of story that you might expect from some extreme fringe blogger... the kind of story that never appears in the mainstream media. Only today, it did. And it's not a conspiracy theory, either.
CNN is reporting this evening that the U.S. military is gearing up to get involved in the H1N1 swine flu outbreak widely expected to strike the U.S. this fall. As CNN reports, "The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials." (http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/07/2...)
When it comes to the U.S. military, the word "assist," of course, could mean almost anything. Typically, the U.S. military offers assistance at the end of a rifle. This "assistance" could mean assisting with quarantines, assisting with rounding up infected people or assisting with arresting and imprisoning people who resist vaccine shots.
Just to make it even more interesting, this operation will include "personnel from all branches of the military" and it will involve cooperation with FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA is the group of geniuses who handled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They're the ones who confiscated firearms from law-abiding citizens defending their own homes, then thrust people into toxic temporary housing that caused neurological symptoms and breathing problems.
Internationally, FEMA is known as the Federal Emergency Laughing Stock Administration. But now, with H1N1 swine flu, FEMA will be backed by the power of highly-trained, heavily-armed military personnel.
Imagine one possible future in America...
http://birdflu666.wordpress.com/