H1N1 Appears To Be Transmittable From Human To Pig 132
mpetch writes "In an interesting twist, it appears that H1N1 influenza can be transmitted from humans to swine. Apparently a Canadian pig farmer vacationed in Mexico, returned to Canada and infected about 10% of the swine on an Alberta farm. The swine subsequently developed flu symptoms."
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding was that there was some amount of genetic reassortment that allowed the swine flu to be infectious to humans, and to transmit human to human. This altered virus is then somewhat different than the swine flu that typically infects swine, so I think that (in addition to not previously being documented) it is seen as interesting that the virus would jump back to the swine population after mutation. Of course, I may be completely wrong about this, and I encourage anyone better versed in virology to correct me.
pity (Score:3, Interesting)
That's it (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Uh... (Score:3, Interesting)
And that reaction is why it should not be called swine flu.
Re:Serious answer to your question (Score:3, Interesting)
There have been a couple of breaks in that area. IIRC, there were some preserved tissue samples, and about two years ago, they dug up someone who was buried in permafrost who died from it, so they have a pretty good idea what the 1918 flu looked like at this point. They also tested it on macaque monkeys and got a cytokine storm. (Source: BBC [bbc.co.uk]) Also, a few months ago, they took some antibodies from still-living survivors and injected the antibodies into mice. Scientists were surprised to find that the antibodies were still effective even after nearly a century. (Source: bio-medicine.org [bio-medicine.org]) The scientist described them as some of the most potent antibodies ever isolated.
So yeah, they have a pretty good idea what the 1918 flu was, and the CDC says that this strain doesn't have the genes that made the 1918 strain particularly potent, at least for now. There's always a risk that it could acquire that gene from people or animals infected with H5N1, as that's presumably still running around somewhere, but I'd imagine the odds of that are about the same as the odds of the seasonal flu doing so. In short, this is probably a Shakespearean pandemic---full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. That said, I sure would like to know why there were so many fatalities in Mexico (and among young, presumably healthy adults at that). That's more than just a little disconcerting.