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Study: 1918 influenza outbreak was bird flu

Infection Control Monitor, October 7, 2005

The 1918 influenza outbreak, which killed 50 million people, was a bird flu that originally jumped directly to humans, according to a decade-long study reported in the New York Times.

The discovery adds weight to the theory that the bird flu currently ravaging poultry farms in Asia could also evolve into a pandemic.

The most recent influenza outbreaks in 1957 and 1968 were not bird flu viruses; they were human flu viruses that took on genetic elements of bird flu.

Two teams of researchers traced the genetic sequence from pieces of lung tissue from two soldiers and an Alaskan woman who died in the 1918 pandemic. Researchers infected mice and human lung cells with the virus, and used modern tools of molecular biology to identify it more clearly.

So far, most of the more than 60 people who have died from bird flu in Asia contracted the sickness directly from infected birds.

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