You could say we got off easy this time around. While COVID-19 has killed almost 7 million people globally and caused widespread economic distress, it wasn't the worst pandemic the world could face.
Feb 12, 2024
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In the wake of the 1918/1919 "Spanish flu" influenza pandemic, the probability of low birth weight and stillbirth increased among women in Switzerland, according to a new study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, ...
Aug 16, 2023
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Research led by a team at Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, Singapore, has found alarmingly active swine flu reservoirs in South East Asia. Their study traced the evolutionary origin of these viruses and ...
Emphasizing that men who have sex with men (MSM) are most at risk for the virus mpox has the negative effect of increasing support for restricting LGBTQ+ events, according to a new study by UAlbany Associate Professor Ashley ...
Aug 1, 2023
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Research from Associate Professor of Medical and Linguistic Anthropology T.S. Harvey demonstrates how a disease's name can have a significant impact on the public's perception, attitude and behavior toward the disease. Disease ...
Apr 12, 2023
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Researchers at McMaster University have found a class of well-known antiviral drugs could be part of a one-two punch to treat seasonal influenza and prevent a flu pandemic when used in combination with antibody therapies.
Aug 16, 2022
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Far from the respiratory disease it seemed at first, COVID can impact almost all parts of the body, including the brain. For a small number of people, COVID infection may be accompanied by an episode of post-COVID psychosis, ...
Mar 23, 2022
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Researchers at McMaster University have found that children who receive years of season-specific flu vaccines develop antibodies that also provide broader protection against new strains, including those capable of causing ...
Feb 3, 2022
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Convalescent plasma therapy was one of the first treatments available in the battle against COVID-19. But since the therapy's emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration in August 2020, its supposed benefits ...
Jan 19, 2022
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Pandemic restrictions have led to longer life expectancy for Australians, a new study from The Australian National University (ANU) has found.
Jan 17, 2022
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The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. It was caused by an unusually virulent and deadly influenza A virus strain of subtype H1N1. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin of the virus. Most of its victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or otherwise weakened patients. The flu pandemic has also been implicated in the sudden outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.
The pandemic lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. It is estimated that anywhere from 50 to 100 million people were killed worldwide, or the approximate equivalent of one third of the population of Europe. An estimated 500 million people, one third of the world's population (approximately 1.6 billion at the time), became infected.
Scientists have used tissue samples from frozen victims to reproduce the virus for study. Given the strain's extreme virulence there has been controversy regarding the wisdom of such research. Among the conclusions of this research is that the virus kills via a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system) which explains its unusually severe nature and the concentrated age profile of its victims. The strong immune systems of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults caused fewer deaths.
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