The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed approximately 50 million people. The unusually severe morbidity and mortality associated with the pandemic spurred physicians and scientists to isolate the etiologic agent, but the virus was not isolated in 1918. In 1996, it became possible to recover and sequence highly degraded fragments of influenza viral RNA retained in preserved tissues from sever...

BACKGROUND Understanding the risk of mortality during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic could inform preparations for a future pandemic. METHODS Prospectively collected demographic, hospitalization, and death data from all individuals who served in the Australian Imperial Force from 1914 through 1919 in Europe and the Middle East were abstracted from archived records. Analyses were conducted t...

The "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918 was characterized by exceptionally high mortality, especially among young adults. The surface proteins of influenza viruses, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, play important roles in virulence, host specificity, and the human immune response. The complete coding sequence of hemagglutinin was reported last year. This laboratory has now determined the compl...

The influenza A virus pandemic of 1918-1919 resulted in an estimated 20-40 million deaths worldwide. The hemagglutinin and neuraminidase sequences of the 1918 virus were previously determined. We here report the sequence of the A/Brevig Mission/1/18 (H1N1) virus nonstructural (NS) segment encoding two proteins, NS1 and nuclear export protein. Phylogenetically, these genes appear to be close to ...

The coding region of influenza A virus RNA segment 7 from the 1918 pandemic virus, consisting of the open reading frames of the two matrix genes M1 and M2, has been sequenced. While this segment is highly conserved among influenza virus strains, the 1918 sequence does not match any previously sequenced influenza virus strains. The 1918 sequence matches the consensus over the M1 RNA-binding doma...

The first three were admitted in June 1918; the fourth in July 1918 ; tbe fifth in September 1918; and the sixth in December 1918. The first case refused operation, but the other five were operated on and the calculi removed. I am not going to give a detailed account of these cases as I only wish to draw attention to the main points of interest here. A table is added at the end giving a few det...

Plankton samples wcrc t,akcn along the coast and in the sounds of North Carolina to determine the inshore distribul ion of the Chact~ognatha. Five species were found within ten miles of the coast. The large northern sounds with water of reduced salinity do not appear to support an appreciable chaetognath populalion. SarJitta hispida and 8. tenuis, the two characteristic inshore spccics, wcrc co...

The nucleoprotein (NP) gene of the 1918 pandemic influenza A virus has been amplified and sequenced from archival material. The NP gene is known to be involved in many aspects of viral function and to interact with host proteins, thereby playing a role in host specificity. The 1918 NP amino acid sequence differs at only six amino acids from avian consensus sequences, consistent with reassortmen...

The 1918-1919 H1N1 influenza pandemic was among the most deadly events in recorded human history, killing an estimated 50-100 million persons. Because recent H5N1 avian epizootics have been associated with sporadic human fatalities, concern has been raised that a new pandemic, as fatal as the pandemic of 1918, or more so, could be developing. Understanding the events and experiences of 1918 is ...

The "Spanish" influenza pandemic killed over 20 million people in 1918 and 1919, making it the worst infectious pandemic in history. Here, we report the complete sequence of the hemagglutinin (HA) gene of the 1918 virus. Influenza RNA for the analysis was isolated from a formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded lung tissue sample prepared during the autopsy of a victim of the influenza pandemic in 191...