By Lorraine Fraser, Medical Correspondent, UK Telegraph
INFLUENZA
experts are planning to exhume the bodies of British victims of
the 1918 flu pandemic in a search for the virus that killed 40
million people throughout the world.
The experts
hope to investigate the genetic make-up of the virus in a race
to identify the killer flu before the next deadly pandemic. They
have identified the graves of nine victims of the so-called "Spanish
flu" epidemic and are to seek permission to take samples
from bodies buried in lead coffins in graveyards in south London
and Oxford.
The plans
will be revealed by John Oxford, a professor of virology at the
Royal London Hospital School of Medicine at a conference on influenza
in London tomorrow.
Prof Oxford
was a leading figure in a controversial attempt three years ago
to find the virus and investigate its genetic make-up using the
exhumed bodies of miners from the Norwegian Arctic community of
Longyearbyen. The samples were disappointing as the bodies had
not been preserved by permafrost as thought.
The professor
will tell the conference he believes that it may be possible to
find the virus nearer to home. He said the grave sites had been
located by asking a funeral company to review its records of young
people who died in the autumn of 1918 and by checking the death
certificates of 10 likely to be best preserved because they had
been buried in lead. Relatives had not yet been contacted to ask
for their help with the project, which he believes is essential
to protecting against the next pandemic.
"This
is an example where pathology is really helping us for the future.
We want to understand the genetic nature of a virus that killed
40 million people. It has only got eight genes whereas we have
100,000 genes. Can we identify one gene or one piece of one gene
which has this crucial information in it and can we use that in
the future?
"When
new influenza virsuses occur, if we can compare their genes and
say 'it does have that bit that the 1918 virus had' then we will
know that we have something dangerous on our hands."
The conference
will hear other experts confirm that they consider another flu
pandemic is a certainty; the only question is when the next really
dangerous influenza virus will emerge.
The World
Health Organisation's monitoring system went on red alert four
years ago when a new flu virus jumped from chickens to humans
in Hong Kong, killing six people. A slaughter of chickens was
ordered and appeared to stop its spread but some specialists believe
that the virus might still be "in waiting".
With millions
of people travelling around the world, a new and virulent virus
would spread rapidly and probably too quickly for a vaccine to
be made in time. Prof Oxford said there were no plans to reconstruct
the virus: "I don't think the time is ripe for doing that
sort of work and I don't think there would be much scientific
support for it."
Virologists
in America have identified two genes from the virus, found in
samples from a woman who died in Alaska whose body was preserved
because she was buried in permafrost.
Prof Oxford
admitted that he was in a "race" with them to identify
all eight. "I would say they are ahead of us but you can't
be sure who will win and in any case we are dealing with different
samples from different parts of the world." New evidence,
he said, suggested that the 1918 pandemic went through a two-year
"smouldering period" before it exploded, and this might
be the case for other pandemics.
The "Spanish
flu" might be better called "French flu" because
there was evidence that the earliest outbreak was in an army base
camp at Etaples, in northern France, he said. "There were
100,000 troops there at any one time and a million soldiers went
through there . . . and there is evidence now that in the winter
of 1916 there was an outbreak of influenza with a high mortality,
particularly in young people. It was followed a few months later
by an outbreak in Aldershot barracks in 1916 and 1917, and then
possibly the whole thing smouldered away until it exploded in
the winter of 1918".
The "ideal"
opportunity for the virus to spread then occurred with the homecoming
of millions of troops after the First World War.
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