Spanish flu research

Spanish flu research concerns scientific research regarding the causes and characteristics of the "Spanish flu", a variety of influenza that in 1918 was responsible for the worst influenza pandemic in modern history. Many theories about the origins and progress of the Spanish flu persisted in literature, but it was not until 2005, when various samples were recovered from American World War I soldiers and an Inuit woman buried in the Alaskan tundra, that significant research was made possible.

One theory is that the virus strain originated at Fort Riley, Kansas, by two genetic mechanisms — genetic drift and antigenic shift — in viruses in poultry and swine which the fort bred for local consumption. Though initial data from a recent reconstruction of the virus suggested that it jumped directly from birds to humans, without traveling through swine, this has since been cast into doubt. One researcher published in 2004 argued that the disease was found in Haskell County, Kansas as early as January 1918. A similar and even more deadly virus had been seen earlier at British camps in France and at Aldershot.

Earlier investigative work published in 2000 by a team led by British virologist, John Oxford of St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London Hospital, suggested that a principal British troop staging camp in Étaples, France was at the center of the 1918 flu pandemic or at least a significant precursor virus to it. There had been a mysterious respiratory infection at the military base during the winter of 1915-16.

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