Editor's Summary
18 January 2007
The deadly 1918 flu virus
The 1918 'Spanish flu' influenza pandemic was unusually severe, causing about 50 million deaths. Why was it so destructive? The lack of antibiotics to fight secondary infections, and socioeconomic factors may be relevant. But experimental infection of nonhuman primates with reconstructed 1918 virus suggests that the lethal nature of the virus itself was a big factor. It is in fact the only influenza virus lethal to experimentally infected nonhuman primates, and the 1918 virus, unlike other strains, suppresses innate immune responses. The H5N1 viruses now circulating cause a severe lung infection similar to that caused by the 1918 virus and also suppress innate immunity, so therapies that protect this type of host immunity might reduce the severity of infection due to these influenza viruses.
News and Views: Influenza: Fatal immunity and the 1918 virus
Innate immune defences are our first line of protection against infection by viruses and are essential in limiting viral disease. But their reaction to the 1918 influenza virus could have been deadly.
Yueh-Ming Loo and Michael Gale, Jr
doi:10.1038/445267a
Letter: Aberrant innate immune response in lethal infection of macaques with the 1918 influenza virus
Darwyn Kobasa, Steven M. Jones, Kyoko Shinya, John C. Kash, John Copps, Hideki Ebihara, Yasuko Hatta, Jin Hyun Kim, Peter Halfmann, Masato Hatta, Friederike Feldmann, Judie B. Alimonti, Lisa Fernando, Yan Li, Michael G. Katze, Heinz Feldmann and Yoshihiro Kawaoka
doi:10.1038/nature05495
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