Talk:Influenza

Linking technical information to what people already know

Okay, most people have heard of Tamiflu.

So, we have the following in the last paragraph of our lead, currently the very last sentence:

"Antiviral drugs can be used to treat influenza, with neuraminidase inhibitors being particularly effective."

I think it would make a good part even better to add the parenthetic comment (such as Tamiflu or Relenza)(World Health Organization, Global Alert and Response (GAR), Antiviral drugs for pandemic (H1N1) 2009: definitions and use, 22 December 2009. And here's an excerpt:

http://www.who.int/csr/disease/swineflu/frequently_asked_questions/antivirals/definitions_use/en/index.html “ . . . These are the neuraminidase inhibitors oseltamivir and zanamivir, more commonly known by their trade names Tamiflu and Relenza. . . ”

For something a little more technical on Relenza: http://apps.who.int/prequal/WHOPAR/WHOPARPRODUCTS/IN007part6v1.pdf

(And I’m sure there’s plenty of more technical publications on Tamiflu.)

Tell me what you think. And as always, standing offer, if you have the time, jump in, do some research, and help make a good article even better.  :) Thanks. Cool Nerd (talk) 18:35, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

Biondvax reports successful trial with universal flu vaccine, June 2011

BiondVax reports positive results for flu vaccine, Reuters, June 16, 2011. ' . . . "We have confirmed, in what is to our knowledge the first Phase II study of a universal influenza vaccine ever conducted in the world, that the Multimeric-001 vaccine is not only safe and immunogenic on its own, but it also has the potential to enhance the performance of traditional strain-dependant flu vaccines," Ron Babecoff, BiondVax's CEO, said. . . '

BiondVax to Present Phase IIa Results at 2011 BIO International Convention, FierceBiotech, May 31, 2011. ' . . . BiondVax is currently in the final stages of collecting and analyzing the data regarding the immunogenicity of the vaccine, and will announce the final results of the trial prior to the presentation at BIO at the end of June. . . ' <-- As of July 20, search of google news, I am not finding a follow up to this. Cool Nerd (talk) 16:40, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

And as a Sunday, July 3, I do not yet see a reference to a summary of this conference on Google news when I did a news search for "Universal Flu Vaccine."

And here's a link to the 2011 Bio International Convention, which ran from June 27-30, 2011. http://convention.bio.org/

And here's the Biondvax corporate site. http://www.biondvax.com/128084/Events---Presentations-1

And really, it could be like anything else, you're trying to do something new, and the steps may flow very smoothly. Or, there might be unexpected problems. Cool Nerd (talk) 17:12, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Other work towards universal flu vaccine.

The Telegraph, Universal flu vaccine a step closer, Stephen Adams, Medical Correspondent, 8 July 2011:

“ . . . By putting the new antibody together with one they discovered two years ago, they hope to make a vaccine that protects against the vast majority of strains. “It would not only stop people catching a virus, they say, but also neutralise it in those already infected . . . ”

“ . . . Ian Wilson, professor of structural biology at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, said a vaccine containing the two antibodies had "the potential to protect people against most influenza viruses". . . ”

“ . . . scientists from Scripps and Crucell, a Dutch pharmaceutical company, have found that viruses also contain common elements which vary much less. “Antibodies that lock on to these "binding sites" - technically called epitopes - should therefore be able to work year in, year out. . . ”

“ . . . Two years ago the team identified the antibody CR6261, which in mice has been proven to work against about half of flu viruses, including those from the H1 family. . . ”

“ . . . Now they have found another antibody, CR8020, which appears to work against H3 and H7 strains. “Their work has been published in the journal Science Express. . . ”

posted by Cool Nerd (talk) 18:55, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Science Magazine (Science Express), A Highly Conserved Neutralizing Epitope on Group 2 Influenza A Viruses, Abstract, Damian C. Ekiert, Robert H. E. Friesen, Gira Bhabha, et al., Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1204839, Published Online 7 July 2011 (Abstract only). “ . . . The identification of V_H1-69 antibodies that broadly neutralize almost all influenza A group 1 viruses constituted a breakthrough in the influenza field. Here, we report the isolation and characterization of a human monoclonal antibody CR8020 with broad neutralizing activity against most group 2 viruses . . . a highly conserved epitope in the HA stalk . . . Thus, a cocktail of two antibodies may be sufficient to neutralize most influenza A subtypes and, hence, enable development of a universal flu vaccine and broad-spectrum antibody therapies.”

Please note: I am not a doctor. I just take a variety of good sources and take an excerpt and/or summarize the source in a straightforward fashion. Cool Nerd (talk) 19:32, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I included a brief summary with these two references at the end of our Vaccination section. Cool Nerd (talk) 17:31, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Tyler's grippe

US Grant suffered from "Tyler's grippe" apparently named after the president. Grant claimed his family was particularly susceptible to this. Other journals mention many deaths from this. It can obviously lead to pneumonia. But what would we call this flu today? Just some ordinary flu mutation? Probably should be listed someplace. I cannot find enough information to credibly document it. Student7 (talk) 01:11, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Mathematics

I was going to tag this but the article had been locked.

An editor who seemed to know what he was doing was discussing the mathematics of propagation. Each person infecting 1.4 people, virus mutates and therefore burns itself out in 2 or 3 months. This seems like all good stuff, but is not evident from the math. Should another article be linked in describing the process? Or maybe the math figures left out of this one? Right now, not self-evident from the data presented.

One of the main problems right now is why the flu ever burns out. It would seem to me from the facts presented that the virus should stay ahead of prevention methods. Student7 (talk) 13:12, 7 October 2011 (UTC)