foodconsumer.org: 1918 Spanish Flu Survivors Immune to Swine Flu

1918 Spanish Flu Survivors Immune to Swine Flu
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admin on 07/14/2009 22:24:00
 
By Rachel Stockton
University of Wisconsin researcher Yoshihiro Kawaok has discovered that
survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic are immune to the current swine flu pandemic,
although they are not necessarily immune to seasonal flu (Associated Press).
This seems to confirm further that the 1918 pandemic and the current swine flu
are both anomalies; they are more similar in presentation to each other than
either one is to seasonal flu.
Kawaok also discovered that in mice, ferrets and monkeys, the current swine flu
multiplies more severely in the respiratory tract than in the head and sinuses.
So did the Spanish flu.
Unlike modern flu viruses, the Spanish flu attacked relatively young, healthy
adults the hardest. The very old and very young (those segments that are
typically immune compromised) were not nearly as affected.
In a cruel sort of irony, the individuals with the healthiest immune systems
were the ones who succumbed to the virus, which hit the patient so virulently,
that the immune system in response went into overdrive, causing a cytokine
storm.
A cytokine storm occurs when the immune system is so overwhelmed that it sends
too many antibodies at once to the infected area of the body. The result is that
the immune system itself hastens the death of the patient in these instances
(New York Times).
In 1918, many of its victims died within twenty four hours. Most of them coughed
up blood that resulted from lung hemorrhaging; some of them literally drowned in
their own body fluids.
Victims of the mutated flu also lost control of their bowel function, causing
them to not only lose massive amounts of blood, but the entire intestinal
lining.
There was not time for the patient to recover from the initial illness before
being stricken by a secondary infection. Many of the 1918 victims fell sick one
day, then died within twenty four hours; a good number of these victims had
contracted pneumonia within one day of coming down with the flu.