Gene Explains Why Flu Can Be Serious

Research being led by the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the UK has shown that people who have a rare variant of a gene that codes for an anti-viral protein would have a higher probability to end up in a hospital with a serious condition. The people who have the other variants would more than likely just acquire the flu. The gene that has this rare variant is known as IFITM3. The researchers say that the gene codes for a protein that are held by the normal variants of the gene are important for helping the human body defend off the influenza virus and only have mild reactions to it. Also uncovered what that when there is an overload of IFITM3 protein in the body, the influenza virus can not penetrate deep into the lungs. The researchers also noted how serious the virus can be by referencing the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic to show how something new we don't have an immunity to or a antiviral like IFITM3 to help fend it off could kill so many people and affect so many people so quickly. The next step was to prove this by showing how the IFITM3 would help in mice so they did a study using "knocked out" models of mice or mice that have certain genes silenced, in this case the IFITM gene. The conclusion was that the mice who lacked the display of the gene were heavily affected by it and showed similiar destruction like that inflicted by the 1918 'Spanish' influenza. More research needs to be done, but this does show that IFITM3 is our first line of defense and knowing this provides a starting point to figure out how to help those without the right variants of the gene.