- Influenza experts are planning to exhume the bodies of
British victims of the 1918 flu pandemic in a search for the virus that
killed 40 million people throughout the world.
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- The experts hope to investigate the genetic make-up of
the virus in a race to identify the killer flu before the next deadly pandemic.
They have identified the graves of nine victims of the so-called "Spanish
flu" epidemic and are to seek permission to take samples from bodies
buried in lead coffins in graveyards in south London and Oxford.
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- The plans will be revealed by John Oxford, a professor
of virology at the Royal London Hospital School of Medicine at a conference
on influenza in London tomorrow.
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- Prof Oxford was a leading figure in a controversial attempt
three years ago to find the virus and investigate its genetic make-up using
the exhumed bodies of miners from the Norwegian Arctic community of Longyearbyen.
The samples were disappointing as the bodies had not been preserved by
permafrost as thought.
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- The professor will tell the conference he believes that
it may be possible to find the virus nearer to home. He said the grave
sites had been located by asking a funeral company to review its records
of young people who died in the autumn of 1918 and by checking the death
certificates of 10 likely to be best preserved because they had been buried
in lead. Relatives had not yet been contacted to ask for their help with
the project, which he believes is essential to protecting against the next
pandemic.
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- "This is an example where pathology is really helping
us for the future. We want to understand the genetic nature of a virus
that killed 40 million people. It has only got eight genes whereas we have
100,000 genes. Can we identify one gene or one piece of one gene which
has this crucial information in it and can we use that in the future?
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- "When new influenza virsuses occur, if we can compare
their genes and say 'it does have that bit that the 1918 virus had' then
we will know that we have something dangerous on our hands."
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- The conference will hear other experts confirm that they
consider another flu pandemic is a certainty; the only question is when
the next really dangerous influenza virus will emerge.
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- The World Health Organisation's monitoring system went
on red alert four years ago when a new flu virus jumped from chickens to
humans in Hong Kong, killing six people. A slaughter of chickens was ordered
and appeared to stop its spread but some specialists believe that the virus
might still be "in waiting".
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- With millions of people travelling around the world,
a new and virulent virus would spread rapidly and probably too quickly
for a vaccine to be made in time. Prof Oxford said there were no plans
to reconstruct the virus: "I don't think the time is ripe for doing
that sort of work and I don't think there would be much scientific support
for it."
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- Virologists in America have identified two genes from
the virus, found in samples from a woman who died in Alaska whose body
was preserved because she was buried in permafrost.
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- Prof Oxford admitted that he was in a "race"
with them to identify all eight. "I would say they are ahead of us
but you can't be sure who will win and in any case we are dealing with
different samples from different parts of the world." New evidence,
he said, suggested that the 1918 pandemic went through a two-year "smouldering
period" before it exploded, and this might be the case for other pandemics.
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- The "Spanish flu" might be better called "French
flu" because there was evidence that the earliest outbreak was in
an army base camp at Etaples, in northern France, he said. "There
were 100,000 troops there at any one time and a million soldiers went through
there . . . and there is evidence now that in the winter of 1916 there
was an outbreak of influenza with a high mortality, particularly in young
people. It was followed a few months later by an outbreak in Aldershot
barracks in 1916 and 1917, and then possibly the whole thing smouldered
away until it exploded in the winter of 1918".
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- The "ideal" opportunity for the virus to spread
then occurred with the homecoming of millions of troops after the First
World War.
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