Posted on 08/17/2008 3:55:24 PM PDT by fightinJAG
SUNDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) -- People who lived through the 1918 flu pandemic that killed 50 million worldwide are still producing antibodies to the virus 90 years later, researchers report.
"Most people have a notion that elderly people have very weak immunity or they have lost immunity," said lead researcher Dr. James E. Crowe Jr., a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at Vanderbilt University.
"This study shows that extremely elderly people have retained memory of being infected with the 1918 flu, even 90 years later," Crowe said.
This is the first evidence that shows that people developed significant immunity to the 1918 flu virus, Crowe said. "It's important to know that you can develop immunity to such a pandemic virus. That has implications for new pandemic viruses," he said.
The report is published in the Aug. 17 issue of Nature.
For the study, Crowe's team studied antibodies in the blood of 32 people in their 90s and 100s, born during or before 1915. They found that all 32 people had antibodies to the 1918 strain of flu virus. In fact, several of these people were still producing the antibodies to the virus.
(Excerpt) Read more at health.usnews.com ...
Prepare to be astonished!
“That has implications for new pandemic viruses,”
So,,, if you are one of the few who live through the next pandemic, you won’t ever catch it again.
I have never had the flu either and I am in my mid-50s. I have always wondered if it had anything to do with my great-grandmother who got the flu while breastfeeding my grandfather. She died shortly afterwards but of pneumonia, not the flu. I can’t recall my mother having the flu, and I don’t know if my grandfather ever had it. Perhaps some of the survivors descendants also carry some immunity?
Interesting. MOther was born in 1918
I have always wondered: If anti-bodies from a parent can be acquired by a breast-feeding child, and if the anti-bodies are acquired through the feeding, how do the anti-bodies survive the digestive process to be absorbed by the body intact?
BTTT !
how do the anti-bodies survive the digestive process to be absorbed by the body intact?
Intestinal Fortitude.
It works that way with parvo. If a mother dog has lived through the virus, her pups are immune as far as I know.
I just realized it was probably the flu epidemic.
The continuing immunity to the flu probably is a proxy for a whole bunch of other immune system characteristics that contributed greatly to the fact that these individuals lived into their 90’s and 100’s.
Since, I’ve read, about up to 75% of people in their late 70’s have some type of cancer (whether or not it becomes a manifest disease process for them), folks that live into their 90’s and 100’s also apparently have “immunity” to cancer, heart disease and stroke as well.
You used to hear the description, “Grandma has a strong constitution.” That is likely a statement of biological as well as genetic fact.
But still producing antibodies 90 years later-—WOW!
My Father recently died at age 90. Interestingly he had heart problems nearly all his life. I once heard Jack Benny say the secret to a long life was to get a disease and take care of it.
My condolences on your loss.
I also have had family members who had all kinds of things supposedly going “wrong,” yet they just kept on ticking.
That’s helpful to remember sometimes.
Your post really made me think, again, about what previous generations have been through-—yet they went about their business, worked hard, defended freedom, built and sacrificed for this, the greatest country on earth.
I salute them, every single one.
And you know what? We get some of our strength of character from our forefathers, but also maybe truly some of their physical strength is passed down to us!
Reason I'm asking is that I once read that the US Civil War was the first major conflict in which losses to direct combat were larger than so-called “camp deaths”. I'm wondering if that statement can be true, or whether it holds for WW1.
“
Survivors of 1918 Flu Pandemic Immune 90 Years Later
“
Funny (ironic funny) that this reminds me of my father’s beloved
Aunt Olive.
As a child, I recall her memory of “The Spanish Influenza”.
She talked about the amazing number of people that “when they woke
up...they was dead!”.
Even these three and more decades later, I marvel at how an humble old
“flyover-country” lady told me almost as much about the global pandemic
now known as “The Spanish Influenza” as I learned in an excellent
(even if it’s from PBS!!!) documentary; the webpage for the doc is
linked below)
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/previous_seasons/case_killerflu/index.html
PS: As much as it pains me...”Secrets of The Dead” is one of the
few jewels of PBS...it’s just about as much of a truth-telling and
politically-incorrect series as PBS has ever produced.
OK, IMHO!!!
PPS and additional irony:
The narrator of “Secrets of The Dead” (Liev Schreiber, sp?) filled
in for for top dog “Grissom” for a couple of episodes of “CSI”.
My Father grew up working on a farm. He would plow behind a horse all day, yet I can recall his admiration for the Germans work ethic after WWII ended.
He was with some of the first American troops sent into Berlin after the Russians captured it. He was in the combat engineers and they were charged with rebuilding Berlin. He said the Germans they hired worked so hard they sometimes had to make them slow down.
You nailed it. We are, in fact, the progeny of survivors. As I recall, there is a village in England where researchers found everyone whose ancestors survived the Black Death carry antibodies to the plague (or something like that).
AND, Liev Shreiber is a known conservative!
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