Spanish flu may have lingered two years before 1918 outbreak and vaccine could have treated it

Science Daily  May 23, 2019
A team of researchers in the UK revisited the literature published in Europe and the United States, and the notes left by physicians who lived at the time. According to them the science of 2018 provides us with tools which did not exist at the time. Two such tools are ‘gain of function’ where a potential pandemic virus, such as influenza A (H5N1), can be deliberately mutated in the laboratory in order to change its virulence and spreadability. Key mutations can then be identified. A second tool lies in phylogenetics, combined with molecular clock analysis. It shows that the 1918 pandemic virus first emerged in the years 1915–1916. Something similar to what happened at the beginning of the twentieth century could easily be repeated. As a precaution, governments everywhere are stockpiling vaccines against the pneumococcus that usually develops as a secondary infection after the flu, and which causes fatalities on a very large scale. ‘Universal influenza vaccines’ could provide hope of a broader-based immune response, even covering new pandemic viruses…read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE

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