Eideard

Antibodies from survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst in human memory, still protect against the highly deadly virus.

The findings by a team of influenza and immune system experts suggest new and better ways to fight viruses — especially new pandemic strains that emerge and spread before a vaccine can be formulated.

These survivors, now aged 91 to 101, all lived through the pandemic as children. Their immune systems still carry a memory of that virus and can produce proteins called antibodies that kill the 1918 flu strain with surprising efficiency, the researchers report in the journal Nature.

“It was very surprising that these subjects would still have cells floating in their blood so long afterward,” said Dr. James Crowe, who helped lead the study…

“The antibodies that we isolated are remarkable antibodies. They grab onto the virus very tightly and they virtually never fall off,” Crowe said in a telephone interview. That allows them to kill the 1918 virus with extreme potency, meaning it takes a very small amount of antibody.”

Good read – especially considering what this discovery can mean in building tools to use against potential mutations of the H5N1 avian flu.