Belltown, Prepare To "CATCH THAT MONKEY!"
Two weeks ago we were watching American Experience: Influenza 1918 on PBS, because something else was a repeat. So we were reminded that between spring of 1918 and the end of that year, 675,000 Americans died of the flu -- 20 million worldwide-- and no one still knows why, precisely. (In fact, about 36,000 Americans die of the flu annually.)
But then just last week, we saw this article in the Seattle Times, which reported that UW researchers have discovered that the virus suppresses initial immune response, giving virus load a chance to build. Then it shifts gears. Second gear is, your lungs fill with fluid and blood. (Scientists have recently reconstructed the 1918 "Spanish Flu" virus from tissue samples from a victim found preserved in Alaskan permafrost and from samples saved from U.S. soldiers who died in the pandemic, the Times notes.)
"It was an uncontrolled, unrelenting stimulation of the immune system that couldn't be quieted," said Dr. Michael Katze, a UW professor of microbiology and co-author of the new study, reported in today's edition of the journal Nature.We know what you're thinking! Why should the Canucks get to have all the 12 Monkeys fun? Cool your jets, cowboy. There's good news:Seven macaque monkeys in the study were infected with the reconstructed 1918 virus at the Public Health Agency of Canada's high-security laboratory in Winnipeg. All the animals were so severely sickened by the virus that they had to be euthanized within eight days.
The scientists said much research still must be done to better understand how such a virulent flu virus works — especially at different time points in the progression of the disease. And some of that work likely will be done at the University of Washington's primate lab in Belltown.Of course, that's just what you'd expect them say.Katze said, however, that the lab would do the work "no time soon," and it would not involve a fully-reconstructed 1918 flu virus.
