Re-Creation of 1918-19 Virus Suggests Bigger Bird-Flu Threat

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB112850011860760437.html?mod=djemalert

Re-Creation of 1918-19 Virus
Suggests Bigger Bird-Flu Threat
By BETSY MCKAY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
October 5, 2005 2:54 p.m.
Two teams of scientists reported that they re-created the influenza
virus that killed as many as 50 million people in 1918 and 1919. The
findings suggest that the threat of an avian-flu pandemic might be
greater than previously thought.
Researchers from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention and Mount Sinai School of Medicine
said that the historic, killer flu-bug strain probably originated as an
avian bug and then spread in humans without undergoing complicated
changes that many experts had thought necessary for a human pandemic.
Their findings, published today in the journals Nature and Science,
create "cause for concern" and make getting to the bottom of the 1918
flu outbreak far more than an historical exercise, said Jeffery
Taubenberger, the Armed Forces Institute researcher who led one of the
studies.
Fears are growing over the continuing spread of avian flu, which has
become widespread in poultry flocks and is jumping to humans with
increasing frequency. The lethal strain, known as H5N1, has claimed 60
lives in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia since late 2003.
Most of those cases were in people who had direct contact with infected
poultry, but fears are growing that the highly contagious virus could
mutate and begin spreading between humans. President Bush said on
Tuesday that he would consider using the military to enforce quarantines
in the event of an outbreak in the U.S.
 
The findings by Dr. Taubenberger and his team of researchers, published
in Nature, follow a nine-year effort to decode the 1918 strain by
sequencing its eight genes. The research concluded that the pandemic flu
outbreak was most likely caused by an avian virus. The scientists also
discovered 10 mutations that distinguish the 1918 virus from avian bugs,
suggesting changes that the virus made to adapt to a human host, they
said. They also noted that some of those mutations are also present in
the currently circulating H5N1 virus, suggesting it could make the jump
to humans in a similarly rapid and alarming way.
In the second study, published in Science, scientists from the CDC and
Mount Sinai took the decoded virus and re-created it, using a process
known as reverse genetics. The virus they created, in a secure CDC lab,
was "exceptionally virulent," quickly killing embryonated chicken eggs
and mice, said Terence Tumpey, a senior scientist at the CDC who led the
effort. The team also found that the 1918 bug had an unusual ability to
penetrate cells that flu bugs don't usually reach deep in the lungs,
providing some clues as to why its symptoms were so severe.
While the research significantly advances scientists' understanding of
the avian-flu threat, it also raises concerns about keeping the virus
from escaping from the lab or into the hands of bioterrorists. Dr.
Tumpey said the experiments were approved ahead of time by two CDC
committees with internal and external experts, and were conducted under
strict safety and security standards.
Write to Betsy McKay at betsy.mckay@xxxxxxx

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