For instance, it was exceptional in both its breadth and depth. Outbreaks swept across Europe and North America, spreading as far as the Alaskan wilderness and the most remote islands of the Pacific. Ultimately, one third of the world's population may have been infected. The disease was also unusually severe, with death rates of 2.5 to 5 percent—up to 50 times the mortality seen in other influenza outbreaks.

By the fall of 1918 everyone in Europe was calling the disease the "Spanish" influenza, probably because neutral Spain did not impose the wartime censorship of news about the outbreak prevalent in combatant countries. The name stuck, although the first outbreaks, or spring wave, of the pandemic seemingly arose in and around military camps in the U.S. in March 1918. The second, main wave of the global pandemic occurred from September to November 1918, and in many places yet another severe wave of influenza hit in early 1919.

Antibiotics had yet to be discovered, and most of the people who died during the pandemic succumbed to pneumonia caused by opportunistic bacteria that infected those already weakened by the flu. But a subset of influenza victims died just days after the onset of their symptoms from a more severe viral pneumonia—caused by the flu itself—that left their lungs either massively hemorrhaged or filled with fluid. Furthermore, most deaths occurred among young adults between 15 and 35 years old, a group that rarely dies from influenza. Strikingly, people younger than 65 years accounted for more than 99 percent of all "excess" influenza deaths (those above normal annual averages) in 1918–1919.

Efforts to understand the cause of the 1918 pandemic and its unusual features began almost as soon as it was over, but the culprit virus itself remained hidden for nearly eight decades. In 1951 scientists from the University of Iowa, including a graduate student recently arrived from Sweden named Johan Hultin, went as far as the Seward Peninsula of Alaska seeking the 1918 strain. In November 1918 flu spread through an Inuit fishing village now called Brevig Mission in five days, killing 72 people—about 85 percent of the adult population. Their bodies had since been buried in permafrost, and the 1951 expedition members hoped to find the 1918 virus preserved in the victims' lungs. Unfortunately, all attempts to culture live influenza virus from these specimens were unsuccessful.

In 1995 our group initiated an attempt to find the 1918 virus using a different source of tissue: archival autopsy specimens stored at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP). For several years, we had been developing expertise in extracting fragile viral genetic material from damaged or decayed tissue for diagnostic purposes. In 1994, for instance, we were able to use our new techniques to help an AFIP marine mammal pathologist investigate a mass dolphin die-off that had been blamed on red tide. Although the available dolphin tissue samples were badly decayed, we extracted enough pieces of RNA from them to identify a new virus, similar to the one that causes canine distemper, which proved to be the real cause of the dolphin deaths. Soon we began to wonder if there were any older medical mysteries we might solve with our institute's resources.

2 Comments

1. 1. detectorlam 08:54 AM 4/29/09

   This is very less mask in my country,i think USA and Mexico has been less more.
   
   
   Eric
   
   http://www.1gameconsole.com

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2. 2. jack.123 05:22 AM 4/10/10

   There's no mention ,if the first soldier survived? If he did might his descendants have some information in their genes?Or for that matter others as well?

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