The 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus exhibits hemagglutinin protein sequence homology with the 1918 pandemic influenza virus. We found that human monoclonal antibodies recognized the Sa antigenic site on the head domains of both 1918 and 2009 hemagglutinins, a site that is hypervariable due to immune selection. These antibodies exhibited high potency against the 2009 virus in vitro, and o...

Spatial variations in disease patterns of the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic remain poorly studied. We explored the association between influenza death rates, transmissibility and several geographical and demographic indicators for the autumn and winter waves of the 1918-1919 pandemic in cities, towns and rural areas of England and Wales. Average measures of transmissibility, estimated by the rep...

Laborers and soldiers from China and Southeast Asia recruited during the First World War by Britain and France have been suggested as the origin of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Western Europe. This study aimed to review the available data to better understand the sources and origins of the 1918 influenza pandemic, and clarify whether, in fact, there was an Asian connection to its onset. We re...

The "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, which caused approximately 50 million deaths worldwide, remains an ominous warning to public health. Many questions about its origins, its unusual epidemiologic features, and the basis of its pathogenicity remain unanswered. The public health implications of the pandemic therefore remain in doubt even as we now grapple with the feared emergence of ...

Pandemics are the most dramatic presentation of influenza. Three have occurred in the twentieth century: the 1918 H1N1 pandemic, the 1957 H2N2 pandemic, and the 1968 H3N2 pandemic. The tools of molecular epidemiology have been applied in an attempt to determine the origin of pandemic viruses and to understand what made them such successful pathogens. An excellent example of this avenue of resea...

Abstract My effort to address the comments made by two distinguished scholars (to “negate their negations” as it were), consists of three steps. I will start with a brief resume Hegel’s dialectical logic, provide scaffold for debate. Subsequently, made. In case Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, focus on his reference Althusser. Bart Gremmen, dialectics biology (on an inherently science), notably Mendel. F...

Jérôme Kasparian [email protected] Teramobile, Université de Lyon; Université Lyon 1; CNRS; LASIM UMR 5579, bât. A. Kastler, 43 Bd du 11 novembre 1918, F-69622 Villeurbanne Cedex, France GAP, Université de Genève, 20 rue de l’École de Médecine, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland Roland Ackermann Teramobile, Université de Lyon; Université Lyon 1; CNRS; LASIM UMR 5579, bât. A. Kastler, 43 Bd d...

Most monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) to the influenza A virus hemagglutinin (HA) head domain exhibit very limited breadth of inhibitory activity due to antigenic drift in field strains. However, mAb 1F1, isolated from a 1918 influenza pandemic survivor, inhibits select human H1 viruses (1918, 1943, 1947, and 1977 isolates). The crystal structure of 1F1 in complex with the 1918 HA shows that 1F1 co...