The much-dreaded H1N1 flu, which is spreading fear across the globe is actually a deadly cocktail of three viruses namely Avian flu, human flu and swine flu making difficult to contain it.
According to Dr V N Katoch, Director Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) several influenza viruses keep on circulating among human, birds and animals like pigs and keep on recombining and reasserting with each others. These changes cause genetic variations among these viruses and new viruses emerge in this process.
"Most of the time this recombination does not cause much effect and goes unnoticed. But sometimes (as in present case) their capacity increase manifold and that is when they cause major damage to its carriers," he told PTI.
Katoch said the last time the world saw the emergence of such a virus was in 1918 when the Spanish flu outbreak wiped off nearly 50-100 million people in Europe.
Observing that in the recent case of flu outbreak, it has not been ascertained how the virus has recombined, the scientist said, while screening the suspected H1N1 patients doctors look for the genetic structure of the virus. "If it is same to that of H1N1 then the patient is infected with it".
The sequencing of the virus has been done in the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta.
The CDC in its analysis has said that the classical swine flu is a respiratory disease caused by the influenza type A virus that regularly causes outbreaks of influenza in pigs. This virus was first isolated in pigs in 1930.
It further says that like all influenza viruses swine flu virus changes constantly. Pigs can be infected by avian influenza and human influenza as well.
"In fact, it is possible that the virus got mutated when it got transferred to some human at a pig farm," Katoch said.
In the past, CDC received reports of approximately one human influenza virus every one or two years, but since December 2005, 12 cases of human infection with swine flu have been reported.
The threat this time around, according to experts, is that the infection has been spreading from human to human, the senior scientist said.
The only way to prevent the flu spread in a country like India is to prevent the virus from entering the country.
