Word: influenzae
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...worst. By canceling summer programs in Mexico and stockpiling supplies, they're trying to stop outbreaks before they start - and at the same time attempting to reassure jittery students. At Columbia University in New York City - where a graduate student on Sunday received a diagnosis of Type A influenza, which has been linked to swine flu - the assistant vice president for health services, Dr. Samuel Seward, sent an e-mail to students urging them to cover their mouths when they sneeze and to clean things they touch often, like computer keyboards. "Avoid holding, hugging or kissing anyone...
...problem begins with the wily nature of the influenza virus itself. It may be an uncomplicated thing, made up of nothing more than 10 proteins assembled into a genome that's simple even by microbiological standards, but that bare-bones genome is unusually flexible, with snap-in, snap-out gene segments that allow easy mutation and exchange of information with other viruses. That's the reason we need a new flu vaccine every year: by the time one flu season has ended and the next one begins, the virus has changed so much, it can simply shake off last year...
...that are susceptible to it - with humans, pigs and certain kinds of birds leading the list. "There are surface markers on the cells of some species that bind with sites on the flu virus," says Dr. Peter Daszak, an emerging-disease ecologist and president of the Wildlife Trust. "The influenza virus evolved along with pigs, and it did the same with a few other mammals and with birds." (Read "To Travel or Not to Travel? A Swine Flu Dilemma...
...fairly blame the pigs (indeed, the CDC has officially stopped calling the virus "swine flu," opting instead for the more hog-friendly 2009 H1N1 flu), can we blame Mexico? That charge doesn't stick either. Decades ago, numerous countries came together to develop the Global Influenza Surveillance Network (GISN), which allows epidemiological teams to spot new flu viruses as soon as they emerge and get vaccines ready in time. But the GISN only tracks human flu, meaning animal flu can slip by undetected. What's more, pigs that carry influenza tend not to die en masse the way flocks...
...describing phone calls from friends and family back home. “I was thinking about going back, but now I’m just going to see how it evolves from here.” According to the World Health Organization, swine flu is a strain of the influenza virus found in pigs that is rarely transferable to humans. But the recent outbreak is believed to be a mutated form of the strain which has contributed to its high degree of contagiousness among humans. The flu’s symptoms are similar to the standard influenza virus?...