The BBC recently reported that researchers at the British Natural Institute for Medical Research recently published a study concluding that the 1918 influenza pandemic likely jumped from birds to human beings.
Although there has been much speculation that the disease was zoonitic, there has been little in the way of evidence to suggest rather the disease originated in human beings or animals.
The NIMR team looked at hemagglutinins — molecules that the virus uses to attach itself to cells — in samples of the 1918 virus. Typically, viruses in birds donÂ’t cross the species barrier because their hemagglutinins act on different cell receptors than viruses that afflict human beings.
But the researchers concluded that only small changes would have been required for the influenza virus to have crossed from birds to human being — much smaller changes, in fact, than occurred in influenza outbreaks in 1957 and 1968 that crossed the species barrier.
Source:
1918 killer flu secrets revealed. The BBC, February 5, 2004.