Odds and Ends
Had flu? You may have H1N1 protection
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-11-17 10:16
Influenza is a very mutation-prone virus and from year to year the circulating strains drift, or change slightly. This is why new vaccines must be formulated each year and why people can catch flu again and again.
The new H1N1 was a never-before-seen combination of swine flu viruses, with a sprinkling of human and avian flu virus genetic sequences. But its long-ago ancestor was an H1N1 virus first seen in the 1918 influenza pandemic that killed upwards of 50 million people.
The researchers found that the new H1N1 swine flu shared 49 percent of its epitopes with older, seasonal H1N1 strains.
Using blood from healthy donors, they found that T-cells could recognize about 17 percent of these markers.
