Their immune systems still carry a memory of that virus...
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Antibodies from survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst in human memory, still protect against the highly deadly virus, researchers reported on Sunday.
These survivors, now aged 91 to 101, all lived through the pandemic as children.
"The antibodies that we isolated are remarkable antibodies. They grab onto the virus very tightly and they virtually never fall off," Crowe said in a telephone interview.
The human body has two systems for fighting off bacterial and viral invaders. One system uses so-called T-cells while the other employs B-cells, made in the bone marrow, which in turn
make antibodies to both flag and directly attack the targets.
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clipped from news.yahoo.com
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