Last week, The Lancet released a study stating that an influenza pandemic similar to the so-called Spanish flu pandemic that killed between 50 and 100 million people between 1918 and 1920 would kill about 62 million people today, with 96 percent of the deaths occurring in developing countries (details here, free registration required). It is reassuring to learn that researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have succeeded in imaging one of the viruses that causes influenza. So far, they've studied the H3N2 strain, but they could soon image other ones. This finding could help to discover how antibodies inactivate the virus — and maybe save millions of lives.
