19-year-old U.S. Army Private David Lewis set out with his unit on a 50-mile hike from Fort Dix on February 5, 1976. On that frigid day, he collapsed and died. An autopsy sample unexpectedly tested positive. H1N1 swine flu virus.
Viral disease surveillance at Fort Dix found 13 additional cases among recruits who had been hospitalized with respiratory illness, and additional serological antibody testing revealed that more than 200 recruits had been infected but not hospitalized. Novel swine H1N1 strain.
Alarm bells immediately sounded in the epidemiological community: Was Private Lewis’ death from H1N1 swine flu a harbinger of a new global pandemic like the deadly H1N1 swine flu that claimed 100,000 lives in 1918? Estimated 50 million people worldwide?
The U.S. government acted swiftly. On March 24, 1976, President Gerald Ford announced plans to “vaccinate every man, woman and child in the United States.” On October 1, 1976, Mass vaccination campaign begins.
Meanwhile, Fort Dix’s initial small outbreak was quickly contained, and no new cases have been reported on the base since February. “It was clear that it hadn’t spread beyond Fort Dix and had gone away,” Army Colonel Frank Topp, who led the virus investigation at Fort Dix, later told me.
Nevertheless, biomedical scientists around the world are concerned about the epidemic and have been stunned by the large-scale vaccination program in the United States. Launch of H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Research and Development Program Going into the winter of 1976-1977, the world was waiting and preparing for a major H1N1 swine flu pandemic that never came.
But that wasn’t the end of the story. Experienced infectious disease epidemiologistI Unintended consequences of seemingly prudent actions But in the end it’s an unnecessary preparation.
What was strange about the H1N1 Russian flu pandemic
In an epidemiological twist, a new pandemic influenza virus emerged, but it was not the expected H1N1 swine virus.
In November 1977, Russian health officials reported that a strain of human-origin H1N1 influenza (not swine-origin) had been detected in Moscow. By the end of that month, the news had spread throughout the Soviet Union, Soon around the world.
Compared to other types of influenza, This pandemic was unique.First, it had a low mortality rate, about one-third that of most flu strains. Second, it only regularly infected people under the age of 26. And finally, unlike past emerging pandemic flu viruses, it failed to eradicate the existing H3N2 subtype that was the seasonal flu that year. Instead, two flu strains circulated in parallel: a new H1N1 and the long-standing H3N2.
Here the story takes another turn. Peter Pares At that time A new technique called RNA oligonucleotide mapping To study the genetic structure of the novel H1N1 Russian influenza virus, he and his colleagues grew the virus in the lab and used an RNA-cutting enzyme to slice the viral genome into hundreds of pieces. When the cut-up RNA was spread out in two dimensions based on size and charge, the RNA fragments formed a unique map of fingerprint-like spots.
Comparing the spotting patterns of the 1977 H1N1 Russian flu with a variety of other influenza viruses, Parese found, to his surprise, that this “new” virus was essentially Identical to conventional human influenza H1N1 strains It became extinct in the early 1950s.
So the 1977 Russian flu virus was actually a strain that had disappeared from the face of the earth 25 years earlier, and then somehow resurrected and circulated again, which explains why it only affected young people – older people had already been infected with the virus during a pandemic decades earlier and had developed immunity to it.
But how did ancient lineages come back from extinction?
Refining the timeline of the resurrected virus
Despite its name, the Russian Flu did not actually start in Russia: the first reports of the virus came from Russia, but subsequent reports from China provided evidence that the virus was first detected in May and June 1977. In the Chinese port city of Tianjin.
In 2010, scientists used detailed genetic studies of several samples of the 1977 virus to determine date their earliest common ancestor. this “Molecular ClockThe data showed that the virus first infected people a year earlier, in April or May 1976.
Thus, the strongest evidence is that the 1977 Russian Flu actually originated, or more accurately “re-emerged,” in or near Tianjin, China, in the spring of 1976.
Frozen Laboratory Virus
Was it just a coincidence that within months of Pvt. Lewis’ death from H1N1 swine flu, a previously extinct strain of H1N1 influenza suddenly reintroduced itself into the human population?
For years, influenza virologists around the world have stored influenza virus strains in freezers, including strains that are no longer extinct in the wild. In 1976, fears of a new H1N1 swine flu pandemic in the United States led to a worldwide A surge in research on the H1N1 virus and vaccinesThere was certainly the possibility of an accidental release of one of the stored viruses in any country where H1N1 research was taking place, including China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and possibly others.
Years after the re-emergence, microbiologist Parese recounted a private conversation he had with Zhu Zhiming, China’s leading expert on influenza at the time. “The emergence of the 1977 H1N1 virus is now considered the most important cause,” Parese wrote in 2004. Results of vaccine trials in the Far East It challenged thousands of recruits with the live H1N1 virus.”
It’s unclear how such an accidental leak could have occurred during vaccine testing, but there are two possibilities: First, scientists could have used a revived H1N1 virus as a starting point for developing a vaccine. Live, attenuated H1N1 vaccines. If the virus in the vaccine had not been sufficiently weakened, it could have spread from person to person. Another possibility is that researchers used a live, resurrected virus to test the immunity provided by traditional H1N1 vaccines and it accidentally escaped from the lab environment.
Whatever the specific mechanism of release, the detailed information about the location and timing of the pandemic, combined with the status of Chu and Parese as highly credible sources, provides a strong case that the source of the Russian flu pandemic virus was an accidental release in China.
A solemn historical lesson
The resurgence of the extinct but dangerous human-adapted H1N1 virus came at a time when the world was struggling to contain the perceived impending swine H1N1 influenza pandemic, and people were so concerned about the possibility of a new pandemic that they inadvertently created one. Self-fulfilling prophecy pandemic.
I’m not trying to blame anyone here. In fact, what I’m trying to say is that in 1976, during a time of epidemiological chaos and growing fears around the world of an impending pandemic, any laboratory in any country could have accidentally released a resurrected virus that came to be known as the Russian Flu. As the world scrambled to stop a new pandemic of H1N1 swine flu that had broken out at Fort Dix through research and vaccination, an accident could have happened anywhere.
Of course, there have been dramatic improvements in biocontainment facilities and policies over the past half century, but there have also been equally dramatic changes. High Containment Laboratory Growth All over the world.
Overreaction. Unintended consequences. Worsening circumstances. Self-fulfilling prophecy. There are many words to describe how the best of intentions can go awry. As the effects of COVID-19 continue to play out, the world now faces new threats from cross-species infections, such as avian influenza virus and MPOX virus. It is important to respond quickly to these new threats to prevent new global disease pandemics. History suggests: fast, but not too soon.
Donald S. Burke Dean Emeritus of the School of Public Health at the University of Pittsburgh and Professor Emeritus of Health Sciences Policy and Epidemiology. conversation Under Creative Commons License.Please read Original article.
