The spread of bird flu across Asia and parts of Europe and the Middle East, as well as the occasional infections of humans with disconcertingly high number of deaths, have cause concern about potential new global epidemic of influenza.
Literally for ages influenza has been with mankind and it would be naive to think that as of the 21st century there will be no further influenza pandemics.
Now we may have the opportunity to follow the emergence of a potential new influenza pandemic and to prepare ourselves, so that we may ameliorate the burden of the outbreaks or perhaps even avert it together at the start.
Influenza or simply “flu” is caused by a virus. It occurs not only in occasional major pandemic outbreaks but also in epidemics or variable severity almost every winter.
The term “influenza” has been derived from the Italian influential in the mid 1300s, indicating that, at the time, the illness was believed to result from astrological influences. Yet, the aetiology of the disease and the explanation for its peculiar behaviors remained elusive.
At the turn of the 19th century, influenza was thought to be due to a bacterial infection with Haemophilus influenzae.
It was it until 1931 that Richard Shope showed that swine influenza should be transmitted with filtered mucus, indicating that the causative agent was a virus. A few years later, Smith and co-workers isolated the influenza virus from humans with respiratory illness.Richard Shope, American animal pathologist and virologist who was the first to isolate an influenza virus, first to vaccinate animals against influenza and first to identify the causative agent as a virus in the 1918 – 19 Spanish influenza pandemic.
The Spread of Influenza
