Contagion Bird Flu

The idea of a superbug sweeping the world has long fired up people’s imaginations, the 2011 movie Contagion is one manifestation of such fears, albeit a pretty scientifically-accurate manifestation. While the film certainly depicts a “worst-case scenario,” where an unknown and highly-contagious virus that is difficult to grow in a lab infects millions of people around the globe, it carefully works with the technical details, providing a plausible situation.

One can claim that influenza is an infection that has victimized people from just about every generation that we have known. The term Influenza comes from the Latin word "influentia", first used by the Italians in the 1600's. It is a highly contagious infection particulary of the respiratory tract.In addition to us humans, influenza can occur in pigs, horses, and several other mammals as well as in certain wild and birds. It can also jump from specie to specie as observed in late 1997 when influenza from chickens was having its effects on people in Hong Kong. Because influenza is highly contagious and spreads easily, it has appeared in our history many a times as epidemics. Influenza is caused by an

According to the CDC there was a breakout in “1918-19 Flu pandemic, which killed as many as 50 million people worldwide”causing the biggest breakout for Influenza (Reconstruction of 1918 Influenza Pandemic Virus). Influenza originated from Asia and the Middle East. Virtually all mammalian species have influenza. Influenza is a contagious respiratory illness caused by the Influenza virus. There are three types of Influenza: type A, type B, and type C. Influenza has numerous symptoms, vaccinations, and is unlikely to kill it’s host.

According to History.com, a well-known historical record website, on March 11th 1918, a U.S. Army soldier reported cold-like symptoms consisting of sore throat, fever, and headache. By the noon of that same day, over 100 other soldiers reported the same symptoms. This would grow into the first-known outbreak of influenza in the world, infecting 500 million people worldwide, and killing over 20 million people. Robert Krulwich, a scientific correspondent for NPR, explains the process by which a virus enters your body and manifests into something much worse: The influenza virus first enters your respiratory system by inhalation or other, less-common methods. The virus is then expelled into your bloodstream where it latches onto a cell found there.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic was a disaster because it was the deadliest in modern history. This disease killed many people. In fact, more U.S. soldiers in WWI died of the flu rather than in battle. The virus was profoundly contagious back in 1918. It was a virus that besieged the respiratory system. Meaning that if anyone who had the flu coughed or sneezed and an uninfected person inhaled it, they would catch it as well.

It traveled across the United States in weeks, the globe in only a few months, and it could have a rapid course, progressing from early symptoms to death in a day. The epidemic had two other crucial characteristics. It did not respect the epidemiologic rules taught by influenza outbreaks ignoring risk factors such as age and localized outbreaks. Its symptoms were gruesome: Your face turns a dark brownish purple. You start to cough up blood. Your feet turn black. A blood-tinged saliva bubbles out of your mouth. You die--by drowning. It was a mystery with no known origin, no known etiology, and no treatment. From its extraordinary ability to reach into everyday life in every nation to the special trains to carry away the dead, the epidemic is a story of mythic proportions. Along with these colossal attributes, it is also given, in popular thought, the power of

Wild aquatic fowl, ducks in particular, serve as a reservoir for the Influenza virus to transmit into poultry and then to humans. Infected birds shed flu viruses in their saliva, nasal secretions, and feces (CDC, 2004). The current virus seen in Asia is denoted as H5N1 and was first seen in terns in South Africa in 1961 (CDC, 2004). The first human seen infection of the avian H5N1 viruses was in 1997 in Hong Kong in a three- year old boy (Ruben, 2005). The outbreak involved 18 cases and killed 6, one third of the confirmed infected population (Rueben, 2005). In three days 1.5 million birds were killed in order to prevent further spread. A new pandemic is now on the horizon with recent outbreaks in poultry in the eight Asian countries of Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam since 2004 (CDC, 2005). As of July 5, 2005, there have been 108 reported human cases of the H5N1 virus with 54 deaths (CDC, 2004). In wake of a

Influenza is very contagious and spreads rapidly from person to person. Influenza causes worldwide yearly epidemics. According to World Health organization Influenza affects 5-15% world’s population and resulting in 500,000 deaths yearly. Ottenberg stated that, in United States, an average of 200,000 were hospitalized and 36,000 died each year from influenza complications. Influenza is the sixth leading cause of death among US adults and is related to 1 in 20 death in persons older than 65 years. Disease control and prevention estimates indicate that infections like H1N1 which is one of the types of influenza, have resulted in an estimated 42 to 86 million cases and 8520 to 17620 deaths. As I mentioned earlier that infections like

There are there types of influenza A and C or the most severe types and B which is the most common, Luckily not the to severe. The virus works by first attaching to the outside of a host cell. It injects its RNA into the cell. Unfortunately our cells treat the RNA like they should. It translates the viral genes using the cell’s ribosomes and enzymes. Now the virus can take the cell over and use it to reproduce more viruses. Sooner or later it releases the new nauseating viruses and they search for another cell to raid.

Influenza is an infectious illness that can be spread from one individual to the next. It can be transmitted by means of saliva, nasal secretions, feces and blood. It can also be spread by coming in contact with the virus on contaminated surfaces. Influenza is responsible for an average of 36,000 deaths and for more than 226,000 hospitalizations each year in the United States. (Davidson, 2007-2009, Davis, 2007).

The influenza virus usually has a round shape; it can be elongated or even have an irregular shape at times. In addition, it has a layer of spikes on its exterior. Note that there are two different types of these spikes. Each spike has its own protein, one is the hemagglutinin (HA) protein and the other is the neuraminidase (NA) protein. The HA protein lets the virus to attach to a cell, so it can enter into a host cell and start the infection process (every virus must enter cells in order to make more copies of themselves). The NA protein is needed for the virus to leave the host cell, so that new viruses that were made inside the host cell can infect more cells. Because these proteins are present on the surface of the virus, they are visible to the human immune system. Inside the layer of spikes, are eight pieces of RNA that contain the genetic information for making new copies of the virus. Each segment contains instructions to make one or more proteins of the virus.

Once tightly bound the virus is endocytosed via coated vesicles. The virus is transported into late endosomes which acidify their content and hence induce conformational rearrangement of HA exposing the fusiogenic peptide sequence. The loop region of the HA becomes a coiled coil that mediates membrane fusion. The release of viral genome into the cytoplasm also requires protons that are pumped from the acidic endosome into the virion interior via the matrix protein M2 that acts as a proton channel. Viral RNA dissociates from M1 and is then imported in an ATP-dependent manner into the nucleus for transcription and translation. In humans, the replication of the influenza virus is usually restricted to the airways epithelial cells due to the limited expression of a serine protease, produced by nonciliated bronchial epithelial cells and which cleaves the HA precursor in HA1 and HA2 polypeptides, rendering the virions infectious. Replication and virions production occurs within hours after virus entry. The viral ribonucleoprotein (vRNP) complexes are released from the endosomes into the cytoplasm and subsequently transported to the nucleus, where replication and transcription take

Influenza is a contagious respiratory infection that is caused by influenza virus. Influenza is commonly called flu. Many people underestimate influenza, and think it is a mild disease. In fact, influenza is a deadly disease if it has not taken care of. For example, from 1918 to 1919 about 20million people died from influenza(1). To better understand influenza, it is important to know how it spreads, how is it prevented, and the strains it has.

The flu (influenza) is a highly contagious virus that attacks the respiratory system. The flu has three strains, H1N1 strain, H3N2 strain and influenza B strain. The first known case according to UXL Encyclopedia of Diseases and Disorders “The first influenza pandemic that is known to have been global in scale took place in 1850; it started in China and spread across central Asia to Africa and then to Europe where it nearly wiped out the populations of several major cities in southern Italy and Spain”. The number of cases in the U.S. and worldwide is according to www.cdc.gov “There has been 11,965 laboratory-confirmed flu-related hospitalizations.” The number of cases in the US and world wide per year is 3-5 million.

More people died from the flu than anything else. ´´Influenza viruses spread in tiny droplets caused by coughing and sneezing .´´ This is making it become a worldwide virus. However the people become infected with influenza by touching something that was contaminated with the virus influenza and touching their nose or mouth . Although most strains of influenza are harmless to wealthy individuals , the virus has the ability to mutate into harmful strains which may cause devastating epidemics .