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The Virus That Conquered the World, 100 Years Later

20-Dec-2017

Key points from article :

Called “La grippe,” “three-day fever” and the “Spanish flu,” the influenza pandemic of 1918–1919 ravaged communities worldwide.

Nearly 100 years later, the threat of another influenza pandemic looms large as the scientific and global health communities find ways to prepare for, and battle, future outbreaks.

According to Brad Spellberg Influenza mutates annually and the real problem that leads to a pandemic is a major ‘antigenic shift,’ which takes place when several different viruses infect the same cell and recombine, creating a Frankenstein-like virus.

When these happen, people have no memory immunity to the new virus, meaning that their immune systems aren’t able to react swiftly to fight the virus

Mentioned in this article:

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Brad Spellberg

Professor of Clinical Medicine and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs at the Keck School of Medicine at USC, infectious diseases expert.

Keck School of Medicine of USC

Academic Medical center.

Santhi Iyer Kumar

Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine at Keck School of Medicine of USC.

Topics mentioned on this page:
Pandemics