New H1N1 Swine Flu Viral Strain Discovered in Brazilian Patient
One of the most alarming aspects of the H1N1 swine flu virus isn’t necessarily that it’s spread around the world and has now reached pandemic proportions. It’s that the current virus, which, in general, causes a rather mild form of influenza, might mutate into a strain that produces much more severe symptoms. Virologists in Sao Paulo, Brazil, have just announced they have indeed identified a variant of the flu gene after testing samples taken from a 26-year-old swine flu patient.
Lead researcher Terezinha Maria de Paiva, of the Adolfo Lutz Bacteriological Institute, says it is too soon to know if the new variant, dubbed the A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 variant, will be more aggressive than the type A/H1N1 that prompted the official declaration of pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) but the patient from whom the sample was taken has completely recovered from his bout with swine flu. The patient began experiencing flu-like symptoms after returning from a trip to Mexico.
The genetic variation in the newly discovered strain occurs in the hemagglutinin protein, which makes it possible for the virus to invade new hosts. This finding is very important to the pharmaceutical companies at work to develop and produce massive quantities of a vaccine to fight the A/H1N1 strain that has been causing illness for the last several months.
A variant of the A/H1N1 swine flu virus is responsible for the 1918 pandemic of Spanish flu, which caused the deaths of tens of millions of people all around the world and caused countless others to become ill. At the moment, the WHO lists approximately 36,000 confirmed cases of swine flu in 76 countries. Thus far, 163 deaths have been attributed to the illness.
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the use of face masks and boosting your immune system by taking lots of vitamin-C is still an effective way of preventing the spread of the Swine Flu virus.
i always advice my kids to wear face masks when going into crowded areas. swine flu is really scary and i dont want my kids getting infected by it.
the H1N1 or Swine Flu Virus is very scary at first but now it is well controlled by vaccines and prevention by avoiding going into places with incidence of swine flu.
H1N1 or Swine Flu is a bit scary but it a good thing to note that this virus is not that very deadly. .
One of my sisters got infected with H1N1 or more commonly known as Swine Flu. Fortunately, she did not have very high fever and she was able to recover fast .
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My brother got infected with H1N1 or Swine Flu in Mexico. He got a mild fever and luckily he did not die.
If you look at the pandemic of 1977, when H1N1 or Swine Flu re-emerged after a 20 year absence, there is no shift in age-related mortality pattern. The 1977 “pandemic” is, of course, not considered a true pandemic by experts today, for reasons that are not entierely consistent. It certainly was an antigenic shift and not an antigenic drift. As far as I have been able to follow the current events, the most significant factor seems to have been that most people, who were severely affected, were people with other medical conditions.
during the height of the H1N1 or Swine Flu epidemic, i was very afraid to get infected with this disease and i wore face mask whenever i got into heavily populated areas.
At least a hundred persons in our city have been infected with the H1N1 virus. I was very scared to get infected with this disease during the pandemic*..