1918 Killer Flu Tested on Monkeys

If bird flu spreads person-to-person, scientists believe understanding the 1918 virus may give them clues about how to protect people from the new one.

The new work "gives us another tool," said Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, who was not part of the research. Fauci praised the study and said what it found in the effects on the body are stunning: "There aren't a lot of things that can induce that robust of an inflammatory response that quickly."

The 1918 flu research suggests that those fighting the bird flu in the future could try using drugs that reduce inflammation and control the body's immune response, Katze said.

In the Winnipeg research, the first controlled introduction of the 1918 flu to primates, the monkeys were given extra high doses of the flu virus by nose, mouth, eye, and direct injection into the trachea to ensure infection.

The virus had been tested before on mice, but macaques provide better models of how viruses work on humans, the scientists said.

The fate of the monkeys was sealed within hours of their infections, Katze theorized.

In normal flu, the immune system response wanes, but in the 1918 flu "the innate response stayed up and didn't go down," Katze said.

Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a Mount Sinai microbiology professor who conducted some of the earlier mouse work, cautioned that it may be a mistake to focus so heavily on immune system response. The 1918 flu "induces an overwhelming and probably damaging immune response system" but it is largely because the virus grows so much, he said.

In mice, when the overactive immune response was eliminated, mice died because of high viral levels.

"It's like a vicious circle, you get more viruses, you get more immune response and this results in damage," Garcia-Sastre said.

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