Scientists recreate Spanish flu to help understand bird virus

SCIENTISTS have made from scratch the Spanish flu virus that killed up to 50 million people in 1918, the first time an infectious agent behind a historic pandemic has been reconstructed.

Why did they do it? Researchers say it may help them better understand - and develop defences against - the threat of a future worldwide epidemic from bird flu.

Like the 1918 virus, the avian flu in Southeast Asia occurs naturally in birds. In 1918, the virus mutated, infected people and then spread among them. So far, the current virus has killed at least 65 but has rarely spread person-to-person.

But viruses mutate rapidly and it could soon develop infectious properties like those seen in the 1918 bug, said Dr Jeffery Taubenberger of the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

“The effort to understand what happened in 1918 has taken on a new urgency.”

Dr Taubenberger led the gene-sequencing team.

The public health risk of resurrecting the virus is minimal, health officials said. People worldwide developed immunity to the deadly 1918 virus after the pandemic, and a certain degree of immunity is believed to persist today. Also, previous research concluded modern antiviral medicines are effective against Spanish flu-like viruses.

The virus was made from scratch, but based on a blueprint from Alaska. A sample was taken from a flu victim buried in the permafrost there in 1918.

About 10 vials of virus were created, each containing 10 million infectious particles. The scientists said it only took days to cultivate the virus.