Scientists Studying 2 Cases of Unknown Swine Flu S

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   This is interesting.  We could almost be in the beginning of the next pandemic.  If we begin to see any more cases by this fall, it could indicate that the pandemic has begun.   Maybe it took this extra 40 years for the swine flu to finally make its move?  

Scientists Studying 2 Cases of Unknown Swine Flu Strain(Washn)

David Brown
The Associated Press

(AP) -- WASHINGTON  Public health authorities are investigating two highly unusual cases of a previously unknown strain of swine flu that occurred in the San Diego area late last month.
The cases occurred almost simultaneously in children who had no contact with pigs or each other, a scenario that raised the possibility the illnesses might be the sign of an emerging pandemic strain of influenza.
More than 50 scientists and epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta are studying the strain, and dozens of public health investigators in Southern California are looking for more cases among the those who had contact with the children.

"While we have a low index of suspicion that this is a pandemic, we're being very careful in our investigation to rule out every possibility," said Lyn Finelli, an epidemiologist in CDC's influenza division.
Neither of the children, a 10-year-old boy in San Diego County and a 9-year-old girl in Imperial County, just to the east, was seriously ill. The cases were detected because both were treated at clinics that took nose or throat swabs looking for influenza and passed the samples on to health department labs when they could not identify the strains they found.
"It was a very fortunate lightning strike," Finelli said Tuesday.
Both children have recovered. The San Diego boy, however, took an airplane trip to Texas with his younger brother while at the tail-end of his illness before it was know he had an unusual strain of flu. Health officials in the Dallas area are looking for cases there, as well as among airline employees who assisted the two children, who traveled as "unaccompanied minors."
Public health officials in the two California counties, which both border Mexico, are urging physicians and hospitals to look carefully for cases of flu and report any to local health departments.
Flu season, which officially ended this month, was mild this year. But Imperial County's health officer, Stephen Munday, said his jurisdiction saw a blip of cases late in March, although not enough to qualify as an outbreak. Whether any other cases involved swine flu remains unknown.
The Imperial County girl fell ill on March 28 with cough and a high fever. The San Diego boy came down with similar symptoms, plus vomiting, two days later. People in both households fell ill before and after the children did, although health officials have not determined whether those were also swine flu.

Munday said his department has drawn blood from more than 20 people to be tested for antibodies to the swine flu strain, which would indicate those people had been infected even if they never had symptoms. He said some had traveled into Mexico recently but would not describe them further.
"As of yet we have not been able to come up with any explanation of why anyone would have swine flu," he said.
Molecular analysis of the virus suggests it is the product of a rare event called a gene reassortment. In a reassortment, two distinct strains of virus infect the same cell. The viruses take over the cell's genetic machinery to make new copies of themselves, mingling the genes of the two strains to create a new, essentially hybrid, strain. Six of the eight genes in the new strain are from the North American lineage of swine flu; two are from the Eurasian lineage.

The reassortment probably occurred in a pig sometime in the last decade. Both the sets of genes are slightly different from those of their original lineage, a sign that time has passed. But it's unlikely they have been in human beings very long.
"If these viruses had been circulating at low levels in humans for several years, we probably would have detected them," said Nancy Cox, head of CDC's influenza division.
The ability to find and identify rare strains of influenza virus has improved greatly in the last decade, spurred in part by the "bird flu" outbreak in Asia and the 2001 anthrax attacks.
In the last three years, 12 cases of human illness caused by swine flu strains have been investigated by the CDC. In 11 of the cases, however, those infected had direct or indirect exposure to pigs.
In 1976, a strain of swine flu caused illness in 13 soldiers at Fort Dix, in New Jersey, killing one. Fearing a pandemic, the federal government ordered emergency production of a vaccine and planned to administer it to millions of elderly and vulnerable Americans. Mass immunization was halted, however, when the virus failed to spread and some vaccine recipients got a rare neurological disorder called Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Scientists Studying 2 Cases of Unknown Swine Flu S

This is interesting. We could almost be in the beginning of the next pandemic. If we begin to see any more cases by this fall, it could indicate that the pandemic has begun. Maybe it took this extra 40 years for the swine flu to finally make its move?

Scientists Studying 2 Cases of Unknown Swine Flu Strain(Washn)

Reassortant H1N1