Influenza viruses circulating among wild birds could, in the right combinations, combine to create a virus very similar to that which caused the 1918 worldwide pandemic known as “Spanish Flu”, according to a new paper.
The authors combined avian flu viral segments that were only a few amino acids different than those of the Spanish Flu to create a new virus that was more deadly than an ordinary avian flu, though not as deadly as the actual Spanish Flu virus. The results suggest that such a pandemic could re-emerge from existing bird flu strains under the right circumstances.
Original research paper published in the journal Cell Host & Microbe on June 11, 2014.
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