Summer 2008 Workshopin Biology and Multimedia for High School Teachers

INFLUENZAVIRUS:

A Model for LearningAbout Disease

Laurie St.Pierre

Sandwich High School

Sandwich, MA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:EM_of_influenza_virus.jpg

Understanding Influenza: A Contagious Respiratory Illness

• Cause

• History

• Method of infection and replication

• Symptoms and diagnosis

• Prevention and Treatment

• Current research

CAUSE: RNA Virus

•file:///Users/outreach/Desktop/DESKTOP%202008/curr%20project/Image-3D%20Influenza%20virus

• The influenza virus, commonly known as the flu, is an infectious disease of birds and mammals caused by RNA viruses. Commonly confused with a cold, the flu is a much more severe disease and caused by a different virus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:3D_Influenza_virus.png

History: Known Flu Pandemics

Name of pandemic

Date Deaths

Asiatic Flu 1889-1890 1 million

Spanish Flu 1918-1920 40 -100 million

Asian Flu 1957-1958 1 - 1.5 million

Hong Kong Flu

1968-1969 0.75 - 1 million

Information taken from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/influenza

1918 Flu Pandemic

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1918_flu_in_Oakland.jpg

• American Red Cross nurses tend to flu patients in temporary wards set up inside the Oakland municipal Auditorium.

1918 Flu Pandemic Facts:

• May have killed as many people as the Black Death- bubonic plague

• The majority of deaths were from a secondary infection such as bacterial pneumonia

• It killed between 2 and 20 % of those infected; normal mortality rate is 0.1 %

• It mostly killed young adults with more than half of the deaths in people between 20 - 40 years old due to novel surface proteins on the virus.

• It killed as many as 25 million in the first 25 weeks, whereas HIV/AIDS has killed 25 million in the first 25 years.

• Information taken from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/influenza

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

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Street car conductor from Seattle not allowing passengers aboard without a mask in 1918.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:165-WW-269B-11-trolley-l.jpg

Historical factors may have also

contributed to the spread of the

1918 -1919 flu:

• Global war moving people great

distances

• Crowded conditions in troop ships

Method of Infection and Replication:

• The flu virus binds onto sugars on the surfaces of epithelial cells such as nose, throat,

and lungs of mammals and intestines of birds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Virus_Replication_large.svg

Symptoms & Diagnosis:

• Chills

• Body aches, especially throat and joints

• Coughing and sneezing

• Extreme fever

• Fatigue, headache, and nasal congestion

• Though similar symptoms occur with a cold, they are much more severe with the flu!

Information taken from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/influenza

Prevention & Treatment of the Flu:

• Get the flu vaccine each year due to high mutation rate of the virus.

• Practice good hygiene and personal health habits.

• Cover your mouth when while sneezing and wash your hands regularly as the virus spreads through aerosols.

• Since the flu is a virus, antibiotics won’t work unless there is a secondary bacterial infection.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Aerosol_from_Sneeze

.jpg

Influenza in the News:

Scientists Recreate 1918 Flu Virus From Scratch By Mike Stobbe, Associated

Pressposted: 05 October 2005 03:23 pm ETInsides of Flu Virus Revealed

By Ker Than, LiveScience Staffposted: 26 January 2006 08:06 am ET

Possible Path to Humans for Avian Flu Found

By Sara Goudarzi, LiveScience Staff Writerposted: 16 March 2006 02:00 pm ET

http://www.livescience.com/

Current Research:

• The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project - creating a library of influenza sequences to study why one strain is more lethal than another.

• Research into new vaccines.

• Study the infection in other animals, especially birds.Viral strains between species can occur.

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http://www.influenzareport.com/ir/ai.htmCourtesy of Timm Harder

Scheme of avian influenza pathogenesis and epidemiologyLPAIV - low pathogenic avian influenza

virus; HPAIV - highly pathogenic avian influenza virus; HA - haemagglutinin protein; dotted lines with arrows

represent species barriers