The year of your birth affects your resistance to flu

WHEN it comes to infectious diseases, Ebola and Zika have hogged the headlines of late. But the rise of exotic pathogens does not make more familiar ones less dangerous. Epidemiologists are therefore keeping a close eye on two versions of influenza, known as H5N1 and H7N9 (the “H” and the “N” refer to proteins in the viral coat, and the numbers to particular versions of those proteins). Either of these, they fear, might become pandemic.

Such an outbreak is the sort of thing that keeps doctors awake at night. Between 1918 and 1920, pandemic “Spanish” influenza killed somewhere between 50m and 100m people. Both H5N1 (detected in 2003) and H7N9 (which came to doctors’ attention in 2013) have already caused hundreds of severe or fatal cases of flu. That neither has yet become pandemic is because, in almost all of these cases, the responsible virus was transmitted to its human victim directly from an avian host such as a duck. So far, neither H5N1 nor H7N9 has evolved the ability to hop easily between people. But this might yet happen. Hence the vigilance. And one result of that vigilance is that researchers have noticed an odd pattern among…Continue reading
Source: Economist