I thought I’d share some data and some links on the issue of swine flu, since everybody is talking but people know relatively little about it. You can find more information on:

- the New Scientist website, everything from characteristics of the virus, possible remedies and the FAQ. My article is a short, summarized version of these.

- up-to-date article on Wikipedia, here 

- official up to date statistics & more on cdc.gov.

What this virus is about

I’m sure you heard the fact that this was a mutating virus: well, all strains of flu virus mutate, because they change their traits as they become immune to treatments they encounter frequently; they also change their composition in order to spread more efficiently. This particular strain is a variation of H1N1 – the human flu. What’s alarming about it is its composition: it contains genes from birds, pigs and humans. Its surface protein comes from pigs, so our immune system does not recognize it – that’s how the infection occurs. The virus itself is not that dangerous, the cases identified so far in the US are mild. It is airborne, transmitted from pigs to humans and from person to person. 

An old problem that has been predicted

The virus was originally transmitted to pigs during the 1918 human flu pandemic. Over years, it evolved into a purely swine flu. In 1976, there was an outbreak of swine H1N1 in people at a military camp in New Jersey, with one death. The virus did not spread efficiently, though, and soon fizzled out. The first case of hybrid virus, made of human, pig and bird genes, first appeared back in 1998, and the bird component made it easy to spread and more virulent. By 1999, this variant became the dominant flu strain in pigs.

Scientists issued a warning about the pandemic potential of this virus back in 2004 and again in 2008, when they noticed the huge number of infected pigs and realized that there’s no telling what might happen if the virus were to spread to humans. Interestingly, 1 in 5 pig farm workers developed antibodies to this virus, meaning they had been somehow infected, but most people are not immune to it. As for the Mexican flu, the first human case was discovered on April 2nd, but after Easter (when people traveled to join their families) more cases appeared in different regions around the country.

Possible treatment

The regular flu remedies, such as Relenza and Tamiflu, act against this virus as well, although it’s possible that it will mutate and become immune to them (this is what happened with the latest strain of human flu). The most promising treatment are monoclonal antibodies, which can be modified to recognize a particular strain of virus, and they can be manufactured on a large scale. Right now, this type of remedy is being mass produced as cure for the H5N1 strain (bird flu), but it can be adapted to the swine flu strain. 

As for vaccine – it will take a while to create, and the number of doses that could be produced in the following 4 months is insufficient (approx 340 million doses). The point is, there are solutions both for the cure and the vaccine; this is not an unknown, mysterious virus. However, despite the scale of the alert, World Healthcare Organization officials noted on April 29 that the majority of people infected with the virus have made a full recovery without need of medical attention or antiviral drugs.