Spanish Flu


  • This Day in History: 1918 Flu Pandemic Begins
    On this day, March 11, 92 years ago, a devastating public health crisis began in the U.S. The disease was called the "Spanish Influenza," and first hit soldiers at Fort Riley, Kansas, just back from fighting in Europe. The virus moved quickly and in October of 1918 195,000 ...More
    March 11, 2010
    Posted in News
  • H1N1 Flu Adopted Novel Strategy to Move from Birds to Humans
    The 2009 H1N1 influenza virus used a new strategy to cross from birds into humans, a warning that it has more than one trick up its sleeve to jump the species barrier and become virulent.In a report in this week's early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the ...More
    December 8, 2009
    Posted in News
  • Aspirin Misuse May Have Made 1918 Flu Pandemic Worse
    The devastation of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic is well known, but a new article suggests a surprising factor in the high death toll: the misuse of aspirin. Appearing in the Nov. 1 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases and available online now, the article sounds a ...More
    October 2, 2009
    Posted in News
  • A Possible Link Between 1918 El NiƱo and Flu Pandemic?
    Research conducted at Texas A&M University casts doubts on the notion that El Niño has been getting stronger because of global warming and raises interesting questions about the relationship between El Niño and a severe flu pandemic 91 years ago. The findings ...More
    September 14, 2009
    Posted in News
  • Are We In for a Repeat of the Killer Flu Pandemic of 1918?
    In 1918, the Spanish flu raced around the globe, ending the lives of an estimated 40 million people in less than a year. Epidemiologists believe one in four Americans became infected during that pandemic with 750,000 dying.Fears are mounting that the H1N1 flu, which ...More
    September 9, 2009
    Posted in News
  • Scientists Study Past Flu Pandemics for Clues to Future Course of 2009 H1N1 Virus
    A commonly held belief that severe influenza pandemics are preceded by a milder wave of illness arose because some accounts of the devastating flu pandemic of 1918-19 suggested that it may have followed such a pattern. But two scientists from the National Institute of ...More
    August 11, 2009
    Posted in News
  • Influenza Virus in 1918 and Today
    The influenza virus that wreaked worldwide havoc in 1918-1919 founded a viral dynasty that persists to this day, according to scientists from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). In an article published online yesterday by the New England ...More
    June 30, 2009
    Posted in News
  • New 3-D Structural Model of Critical H1N1 Protein Developed
    In just two weeks from the time the first patient virus samples were made available, Singapore scientists report an evolutionary analysis of a critical protein produced by the 2009 H1N1 influenza A virus strain.In the Biology Direct journal's May 20th issue, Sebastian ...More
    May 26, 2009
    Posted in News
  • Study of 1918-1919 Outbreak Shows Spanish Flu Origin
    A French study of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, which analyzed mortality rates in approximately three-quarters of the European population, has concluded that it is unlikely that the virus, often described as Spanish flu, originated in Europe.Published in the May issue ...More
    April 30, 2009
    Posted in News
  • 1918 Spanish Flu Virus Resulted in Current Lineage of H1N1 Viruses
    In 1918 a human influenza virus known as the Spanish flu spread through the central United States while a swine respiratory disease occurred concurrently. A KansasStateUniversity researcher has found that the virus causing the pandemic was able to infect and replicate in ...More
    April 30, 2009
    Posted in News