Influenza
Catch it, Bin it, Kill it
JimHutchinson | 24 Jul 2009Video:
An excellent television ad produced by the UK Department of Health encouraging good hygiene in an effort to limit H1N1 influenza transmission.
Passive immunotherapy for all Influenza strains?
JimHutchinson | 25 Feb 2009A paper in the most recent Nature Structural Molecular Biology by Dr. Wayne Marasco's group at Harvard describes the potential for monoclonal antibodies directed against the very conserved "stem" region of Influenza hemagglutinin being active in neutralizing all strains of Influenza including avian H5:N1. This is an exciting finding that I am sure will prompt intensive further work. Read about it here.
A 1918 Influenza letter
JimHutchinson | 07 Oct 2008
With influenza season imminent and a palpable decrease in interest in pandemic influenza I thought this sobering account may be of interest.
Professor N. R. Grist (Glasgow) shares a copy of a letter written by a U.S. Army physician during the influenza pandemic of 1918 (British Medical Journal, December 22-29, 1979; 2(6205):1632-3). The original can be found here.
As a reminder of the grim reality of that pandemic, the following letter may be of interest. It was found in a trunk in Detroit among other medical papers handed to the department of epidemiology of the University of Michigan. A copy was given to me in 1959 by the late Dr T Francis, and it is now published with the agreement of Dr V Hawthorne, his successor as head of department.
