Assignment on Swine Flu in the United States, Essay Example

The Swine Flu has become a highly feared disease that has caused the deaths of thousands of individuals within the United States and abroad.  In many cases the Swine Flu is referred to by its medical terminology that is associated with the viral categorization label H1N1.  According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of July 31, 2009, 168 independent countries and overseas territories or communities have each reported at least one laboratory-confirmed case of pandemic Swine Flu, that has resulted in over 162,380 reported cases and 1,154 associated deaths (Petrosillo 163).  This quickly resulted in the WHO declaring high stages on its pandemic scale-alert, “designating the Influenza H1N1 2009 a potential threat to worldwide health and declared the outbreak as Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (Tandon 161).  Due to the extreme increase of the prevalence of the H1N1 viral strain, many researchers have worked hard to develop a history of the viral strain, a list of characteristics of the disease, and possible vaccinations or treatment methods to reduce the impact that the disease has upon the global community.

The Swine Flu, officially labeled as the H1N1 virus has become a large influenza pandemic that had greatly impacted the medical community and populations throughout the world.  The most recent epidemic emerged in April 2009 in Latin America.  According to reports, Mexico became the first country to declare an increase in reports of patients requiring hospitalization for “pneumonia and an unusual series of deaths,” which are common side-effects of prolonged influenza (Petrosillo 163).  These reports in Mexico led many medical professionals to believe that there was the possibility of a new influenza virus strain that had emerged in the local communities.  Within the same time frame, officials for the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta uncovered two cases of influenza in younger children that lived in bordering counties in California that were just across the border from Mexico (Petrosillo 164).  The CDC quickly labeled the new strain as the “Swine Flu” and thus began the large epidemic of the disease in the United States.

There have been cases of the Swine Flu dating as far back in the 20^th century as 1918.  During this year, a worldwide influenza pandemic emerged that was caused by the spread of a human influenza A (H1N1) virus.  This virus was responsible for roughly 40–50 million deaths in multiple regions of the world, where an estimated 4.9 million deaths occurred in India alone (Petrosillo 165).  Although the results were quite fierce and had a major impact on populations across the globe, the pandemic subsided shortly after 1918.  Still, sporadic cases of the H1N1 virus appeared throughout the world, but never again at quite the magnitude as the 1918 pandemic.  Mysteriously, the Swine Flu disappeared from the world in 1957, which many scientists believe was caused by the competition with the emerging pandemic H2N2 strain as well as the many populations developing immunity to the H1N1 viral strain (Petrosillo 165).  However, the disease appeared to emerge yet again in a confined army base in Fort Dix, New Jersey where two hundred and thirty individuals had serological evidence of H1N1 influenza infection and there was even one reported death (Petrosillo 165).  Luckily, this occurrence did not extend outside of the army base and was relatively restricted to only army personnel for one reason or another.  Again, in November 1977, another H1N1 strain re-emerged in the former Soviet Union, Hong Kong, and North-Eastern China; whereby, it caused a relatively mild disease, mostly in young people.  “Genetic studies showed that the virus causing the 1977 epidemic was similar to the one isolated in the year 1950, but significantly different from the influenza A (H1N1) strains isolated in 1947 and 1957” (Petrosillo 166).  It is difficult for many professionals to explain the cause of this difference in the strains, but more modern studies have found a unique characteristic within the H1N1 virus that has created a rather large problem for the global populations.

The specific genetic makeup of the H1N1 viral strains make the current epidemic very intriguing.  The viral agents are made up of many different genetic traits, but most importantly are the RNA transcription coding that creates the strain’s genetic characteristics.  As previously suggested, the causal agent of Swine Flu comes from a swine, or pig, origin.  However, the current epidemic has shown genetic recombination that is not present in humans or swine influenza viruses (Petrosillo 170).  “Actually, the new H1N1 virus appears to be a mixture of avian, porcine, and human influenza RNA.  Genomic analysis indicates that it is closely related to common reassortant swine influenza A viruses that have been isolated in North America, Europe, and Asia in the last 20 years” (Petrosillo 171).  Due to this virus’s genetic mixing, the strain is much different that individual influenza A strains, and much more difficult to treat for removal from the human body.  Current research shows that the RNA coding has discovered many point mutations that have produced changes in the proteins of the H1N1 viral strains.  Particularly, “the mutations in surface proteins result in antigen drift, which helps the virus to escape the immunity of its host” (Dogra 167).  In other words, over a period of time the viral strain has evolved and developed genetic traits and characteristics to become immune to the human immune system’s natural response to protect the body against the disease as well as previous medicinal treatments that were used in the early 20^th century.  This has made the treatment of the mutated H1N1 viral strain much more difficult to diagnose and has created most of the problem surrounding the prevalence of the disease in populations reporting large numbers of infection cases and deaths.

The complete evolution of the H1N1 virus can be found in Image 1 whereby the graph clearly shows the evolutionary path that the strain has taken to become the present Influenza H1N1 2009 strain that has caused so much danger in current society.  Prior to the 1990s, there existed the classic swine H1N1 strain, the Human H3N2 strain, the Avian strain, and the Eurasian swine strains that were all responsible agents for different forms of influenza (Dogra 168).  As previously mentioned, the current strains have evolved to combine the avian, porcine and human strains into one H1N1 Influenza A viral agent that has caused much damage to many countries across the globe.  In the early 200s, the Classic Swine strain mixed with a combination of Avian and Human strains, known as the North American swine H3N2 and H1N2 strains (Dogra 168).  Finally, this combination of swine viral agents also combined with the Eurasian swine agents in order to create the new H1N1 viral strains as they exist today.  These strains have evolved through their recombination processes and have emerged to cause the great medical epidemic in 2009.

Very little research has been produced on the new H1N1 viral strains due to the infancy of the mutation and recently emerged disease.  However, it has been reported that the H1N1 virus is highly infectious and highly effective in being reproduced in large quantities to greatly impact large numbers of people.  The strains can be spread to others within 6 feet of person who is infected by H1N1, and it lives longer in cold and dry weather if it is outside the body than in any other environmental conditions (Mir et al. 163).  Patients are highly infectious beginning 1 day prior to the onset of illness and up to 7 days after the onset, which may be a time period where extreme symptoms may not be present.  Meanwhile, “human-to-human transmission of swine flu can also occur in the same way as seasonal flu through coughing or sneezing by infected people” (Tandon 162).  The symptoms of Swine Flu are very similar to the symptoms of regular human influenza, which are fever, lack of energy and appetite, cough, runny nose, sore throat, nausea and vomiting.  Because of this similar symptoms, medical professions can have great difficulty in being able to properly diagnose Swine Flu cases unless doctors have a high level of suspicion for the possibility of H1N1 infection (Dogra 168).  Even still, many doctors are uneasy about diagnosing the Swine Flu within patients because it often leads to an increased panic in the local communities, large work loads for local laboratories and hospitals, and causing an indirect negative affect of the economy of the local, state and national economies (Tandon 163).  Nevertheless the disease can often cause high mortality to high-risk groups such as the elderly, very young children and women that are pregnant.  Also, people with chronic health conditions such as chronic heart or lung disease, renal disease or immunodeficiency can also quickly become fatal victims of the H1N1 virus without proper diagnosis and treatment.

However, treatment and detection are very difficult within the current state of the medical community.  There are no quick and easy methods for early detection of the H1N1 strains, and only “Real Time PCR, Viral culture, Four-fold rise in swine influenza A (H1N1) virus specific neutralizing antibodies” are able to provide diction through laboratory investigation (Petrosillo 169).  Unfortuantely, these capabilities are not accessible to all doctors in all communities around the work, and only a handful of centers are available in the United States that have the infrastructure to carry and perform such tests.  In addition to the inaccessibility within the medical community, the cost for performing such tests is very high.  It currently costs between $10,000 and $15,000 to perform the tests, and, therefore, it causes a potential threat to the economy and poor populations within the world that cannot afford to pay these high costs (Dogra 169).  Therefore, it is clear that very few treatment options are available.  Only recently has a national vaccination campaign been available to limited numbers of people throughout the United States, but the effectiveness of the vaccine has not been effectiveness results of the vaccines have not been produced due to the recent emergence of the vaccination methods.  It is believed that Oseltamivir is the only available treatment method for the H1N1 virus, but the viral strains have begun to develop immunity to the treatment methods, so the effectiveness within different regions of the world varies (Dogra 169).

Due to the limited knowledge and lack of resources that medical professionals have for the modern mutated H1N1 viral strains, many individuals throughout the world continue to face misdiagnosis and potential fatalities across the globe.  Much advancement is being made to develop potential treatment methods, yet the genetic mutation of the H1N1 strains make it difficult for exact methods to show strong results.  Increased funding by the World Health Organization and other global economies must be utilized in order to reduce the negative effects of the Swine Flu throughout the world population.  Furthermore, additional research must continue to be performed in order to analyze the evolutionary traits associated with the H1N1 strains to help create a permanent medical solution.  Current results have shown that the medical community is on the right path, but the world is still far from being completely free of the Swine Flu and will continue to impact the world population for quite some time.

References

Dogra, Sandeep “Emergence of Swine Origin Influenza (H1NI Virus).” JK Science 11.4 (2009): 167-169. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

Mir, Shakil. A., et al. “History of Swine Flu.” JK Science 11.4 (2009): 163-164. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

Petrosillo, N., et al. “The novel influenza A (H1N1) virus pandemic: An update.” Annals of Thoracic Medicine 4.4 (2009): 163-172. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.

Tandon, Vishal R., et al. “Swine Flu (H1N1) – Pandemic or Bioterrorism.” JK Science Oct. 2009: 161+. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 4 Nov. 2009.