Viral Pathogenesis and Evolution Section, Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
mBio. 2012 Sep 11;3(5). doi: 10.1128/mBio.00201-12. Print 2012.
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 several 1918 victims. These viral RNA sequences eventually permitted reconstruction of the complete 1918 virus, which has yielded, almost a century after the deaths of its victims, novel insights into influenza virus biology and pathogenesis and has provided important information about how to prevent and control future pandemics.
1918-1919 年的流感大流行导致约 5000 万人死亡。大流行期间异常严重的发病率和死亡率促使医生和科学家分离病因，但该病毒并未在 1918 年被分离出来。1996 年，人们有可能从几位 1918 年受害者的保存组织中回收和测序高度降解的流感病毒 RNA 片段。这些病毒 RNA 序列最终允许重建完整的 1918 年病毒，这几乎在其受害者死亡一个世纪后，为流感病毒生物学和发病机制提供了新的见解，并提供了有关如何预防和控制未来大流行的重要信息。
