Gene Mutation Caused 2009 H1N1 Virus Spread 158
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers have found that a gene mutation was the reason behind the increased virulence of the 2009 H1N1 swine flu virus which resulted in a pandemic across the world. 'The H1N1 virus, Kawaoka explains, is really a combination of four different avian and swine flu viruses that have emerged over the past 90 years, and even includes genetic residue of the 1918 pandemic virus, an influenza that killed as many as 20 million people.' The University of Wisconsin-Madison's School of Veterinary Medicine researchers identified the relocation of a specific amino acid in the gene matrix that enabled the virus to hijack host cells, a feat that triggered the recent pandemic."
The World Health Organization's director general said H1N1 is likely to lose its status as a pandemic very soon.
Re:How come viruses get all the cool mutations? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, but you do get mutations! In fact, mutations which allow you to defeat H1N1! And not just a single replaced amino acid, no, lots more! Now how does that silly virus look?
When an immune systems B-cell find something it doesn't like, such as a virus, it goes into a feedback loop, mutates itself so that some copies will dislike said virus even more. In the end you have an immune system against which this virus doesn't stand a chance even though it was a completely unknown pathogen hours earlier. And this response will remain intact for years! (see: vaccination) This is called somatic hypermutation [wikipedia.org]. On the downside, somatic means it won't make it into your germ line so your children will have to mutate all on their own again (though IIRC some of the mothers immune system cells make it into the child to help out a bit).
And something that should be noted (Score:5, Informative)
Is that is WAS a pandemic but the word doesn't mean what most people think. Pandemic has the connotation of something that kills a lot, but it really just means a disease that spreads a lot. It literally means "an epidemic that is geographically widespread; occurring throughout a region or even throughout the world." So you can have a harmless pandemic (as this one largely was) just as you can have an extremely fatal disease that doesn't spread much. A pandemic itself isn't scary, it is a pandemic of a disease with a high kill rate that is.
So for the people who feel like it wasn't really a pandemic, that is simply a function of the media sensationalizing a word. The disease was a pandemic in its spread, but its kill rate was exceedingly low, even lower than normal flu strains, meaning that the net harm wasn't very much.
Re:...and? (Score:3, Informative)
The difference between a virus and a parasite is that a virus attaches itself to a cell and alters the cell so that the cell produces more viruses. Parasites are living organisms in their own right and reproduce in various ways on their own. The difference has nothing to do with whether the disease kills.
In fact, viruses that kill rapidly don't stay around in the population for very long because dead people don't generally walk around and pass the disease to other people. Pathogenicity beyond a certain point is counterproductive. Thus, although most viruses would kill in the absence of an immune system. They also wouldn't spread very far, and the ones that survived would presumably be weakened strains that were not as virulent. Thus, in the long term, you'd probably end up with a similar case fatality rate as you have with viruses now.
Re:I thought it was unjustified media fearmongerin (Score:3, Informative)
You are absolutely correct, insofar as anchors are generally made of metal instead of stone.
Re:I thought it was unjustified media fearmongerin (Score:3, Informative)
I think you're missing the big picture. The big picture is, flu vaccines take a long time to make. Yes, media fear mongers hyped up the worst case scenario, but the mass production was precisely because H1N1 was pandemic; ie, it wasn't as important if it had a high kill ratio as that it spread a lot and hence a lot of vaccines could counter the spread. As a result, a very large production of the vaccine were produced. The fact that "spotter planes told us it had broken up and become a light rain shower" is precisely why about half the vaccines weren't used. If you're looking for the media fear mongers to officially apologize, well good luck with that.
Meanwhile, the lethality of most influenza tends to be less from the flu being strong per se and more to do with people (elderly and children) having an immune system unable to cope. So, presumably the mass vaccination probably did save a good many elderly and child lives. And the pandemic status was accurate. The only thing really left is for the CDC and the WHO to officially admonish the various media fear mongers and apologize that they didn't do such earlier. I'm not really sure what you expecting though, unless you believe it's the CDC's and the WHO's job to have a PR arm to educate people that they shouldn't blindly believe everything the media might spit out, especially when it's the same jackasses spewing yet another thing to fear this week when last weeks fear didn't pan out as nearly as lethal as they made it out to be.