Influenza Virus

Nearly 70 years ago, a team of doctors entered a state mental colony and injected extracts from mice lungs into the arms of nearly 250 "feebleminded males." The liquid was teeming with influenza virus, a tiny infectious agent that had been discovered just three years earlier. Some of the boys and men got sore arms. Others developed rashes.

If you're pregnant during flu season, you've got an extra reason to get a flu shot. Expectant mothers who received the influenza vaccine were less likely to have premature or smaller infants, according to a new study released Tuesday in PLoS Medicine. Preterm births -- when babies are born after less than 37 weeks of gestation -- are on the rise: From 9.5% in 1981 to 12.8% in 2006. And pregnant women are known to be at greater risk of the flu, which sweeps around the Northern and Southern hemispheres with seasonal regularity.

Vaccination rates for the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus have varied widely around the country, with New England having the highest rates and the South having the lowest, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week. Rhode Island had the highest rate of vaccination for swine flu, with about 39% of its population immunized, while Mississippi had the lowest rate, with 13% receiving the shot, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Among children, Georgia had the lowest vaccination rate, at 21%. Georgia now has the highest level of ongoing swine flu activity of any state.

With all the hubbub over tax breaks and unemployment, it's interesting that flu shots turned up on the president's radar this week. President Obama signed a proclamation declaring this week as National Influenza Vaccination Week. As this proclamation says: "Last year, as the world prepared for a pandemic of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, we were reminded of the severity and unpredictability of this serious disease. Thousands of Americans suffered serious complications from the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, resulting in hospitalization or even death.

The virus behind the current influenza pandemic may be known as swine flu, but it didn't come only from pigs. Wild birds and humans also played a role in its creation. Scientists are still trying to unravel how it wound up infecting people and spreading rapidly around the globe. Here's what they know so far. What's the lineage of H1N1? The new H1N1 strain is based primarily on an unusual influenza virus that has been circulating widely in U.S. pigs since the mid-1990s.

On Tuesday, President Bush tried to reassure us by saying he will use the military to enforce a quarantine to prevent the spread of an avian influenza pandemic. I would much rather hear from our president that the federal government will give all the necessary economic support to produce as rapidly as possible a vaccine for the H5N1 (avian) influenza virus. This is the only effective way to prevent a pandemic: a mass vaccination as was done against polio. A Centers for Disease Control director recently said that a vaccine against the avian influenza virus is going to be available but there are not sufficient funds to mass-produce it soon enough.

With all the hubbub over tax breaks and unemployment, it's interesting that flu shots turned up on the president's radar this week. President Obama signed a proclamation declaring this week as National Influenza Vaccination Week. As this proclamation says: "Last year, as the world prepared for a pandemic of the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, we were reminded of the severity and unpredictability of this serious disease. Thousands of Americans suffered serious complications from the 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, resulting in hospitalization or even death.

Canadian scientists who had gone to a Norwegian graveyard hoping to find samples of the influenza virus that caused the 1918 pandemic said Wednesday that their expedition apparently has failed. The team's goal was to excavate the coffins of seven miners killed by the virus. Scientists believed that the coffins were buried beneath the permafrost, where they would have been permanently frozen.

California is eligible to receive $31 million in federal grants meant to fight potential cases of the H1N1 influenza virus during the fall flu season, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius announced Friday. The grant is funded by a supplemental appropriations bill recently passed by Congress and signed into law last month by President Obama. The announcement came a day after Sebelius hosted a summit on the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu. The meeting was attended by representatives from state, tribal, territorial and local governments from across the country.

The American Medical Assn., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the March of Dimes  and seven other groups sent a letter to healthcare professionals Wednesday urging them to counsel pregnant patients to get a seasonal flu shot. The 2010 seasonal flu shot provides protection against the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus as well as two other flu viruses that are expected to be circulating this winter. The letter notes that pregnant women represent only 1% of the U.S. population but account for 5% of all deaths during the swine flu pandemic.

The American Medical Assn., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the March of Dimes  and seven other groups sent a letter to healthcare professionals Wednesday urging them to counsel pregnant patients to get a seasonal flu shot. The 2010 seasonal flu shot provides protection against the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus as well as two other flu viruses that are expected to be circulating this winter. The letter notes that pregnant women represent only 1% of the U.S. population but account for 5% of all deaths during the swine flu pandemic.

Dr. Robert M. Chanock, a virologist who made a remarkable series of discoveries about respiratory viruses in the 1960s and 1970s, including the isolation of the deadly respiratory syncytial virus and four para- influenza viruses, died Aug. 4 at a residential care center in Sykesville, Md. He was 86 and had Alzheimer's disease. Chanock also identified the cause of what was once called walking pneumonia, developed an adenovirus vaccine that is widely used by the military, laid the foundation for the discovery of hepatitis A and C and the development of vaccines against them, pioneered the development of the nasal spray influenza vaccine and played a key role in the discovery of the Norwalk virus, the first member of the family of viruses that cause what is generally known as intestinal flu. One of his biggest disappointments was his team's inability to develop a vaccine against the respiratory syncytial virus, but they did develop antibodies that could be used to protect infants at high risk for the disease.

Vaccination rates for the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus have varied widely around the country, with New England having the highest rates and the South having the lowest, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this week. Rhode Island had the highest rate of vaccination for swine flu, with about 39% of its population immunized, while Mississippi had the lowest rate, with 13% receiving the shot, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Among children, Georgia had the lowest vaccination rate, at 21%. Georgia now has the highest level of ongoing swine flu activity of any state.

Zakrullah Nouri has never known a time when his country was not at war. But he doesn't waste time worrying about Taliban bombs or errant NATO airstrikes. Not when there's a new and stealthier killer: the H1N1 influenza virus. Afghanistan's first reported death from the disease, that of a 35-year-old engineer from the capital, Kabul -- was announced Oct. 28. Since then at least 10 more people have died in Kabul, said the minister of public health, Dr. Mohammad Amin Fatemi, on Monday.

Russian medical authorities today reported the first three deaths in the country from the H1N1 influenza virus. The two women, ages 29 and 50, died in Chita, a provincial capital about 3,900 miles east of Moscow, Russia's chief sanitation official Gennady Onishchenko told Interfax news agency. Late in the afternoon, Deputy Health Care Minister Veronika Skvortsova told Echo Moskvy radio station that another woman died in Moscow. "The situation is under control and not significantly different from the usual seasonal flu situation," Viktor Maleyev, deputy chief of Russian Central Epidemiology Institute, said in a telephone interview.

After weeks of listening to parishioners sniffle in the pews, and worrying about the spread of the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend decided its flock needed to make some sacrifices this flu season. So this week, the priests will be locking up their Communion chalices and, as a precaution against the spread of germs, temporarily stopping the practice of offering wine during the sacrament. "When you have 4,500 people showing up for Mass, and you have eight cups for the populace, it's easy to see how this could become a problem -- fast," said Father John Kuzmich of St. Vincent de Paul in Fort Wayne, whose church in northeastern Indiana has about 10,000 members.

If you're pregnant during flu season, you've got an extra reason to get a flu shot. Expectant mothers who received the influenza vaccine were less likely to have premature or smaller infants, according to a new study released Tuesday in PLoS Medicine. Preterm births -- when babies are born after less than 37 weeks of gestation -- are on the rise: From 9.5% in 1981 to 12.8% in 2006. And pregnant women are known to be at greater risk of the flu, which sweeps around the Northern and Southern hemispheres with seasonal regularity.

Russian medical authorities today reported the first three deaths in the country from the H1N1 influenza virus. The two women, ages 29 and 50, died in Chita, a provincial capital about 3,900 miles east of Moscow, Russia's chief sanitation official Gennady Onishchenko told Interfax news agency. Late in the afternoon, Deputy Health Care Minister Veronika Skvortsova told Echo Moskvy radio station that another woman died in Moscow. "The situation is under control and not significantly different from the usual seasonal flu situation," Viktor Maleyev, deputy chief of Russian Central Epidemiology Institute, said in a telephone interview.

The virus behind the current influenza pandemic may be known as swine flu, but it didn't come only from pigs. Wild birds and humans also played a role in its creation. Scientists are still trying to unravel how it wound up infecting people and spreading rapidly around the globe. Here's what they know so far. What's the lineage of H1N1? The new H1N1 strain is based primarily on an unusual influenza virus that has been circulating widely in U.S. pigs since the mid-1990s.

Preliminary data from U.S. trials of vaccines against the pandemic H1N1 influenza virus show that a strong immune reaction is provoked by one dose of the vaccine within eight to 10 days after it is administered, federal officials said at a news conference this morning. The findings "corroborate and reinforce data from company trials" that were reported earlier this week, said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is running the trials.