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21 marzo 2022

The 1918 pandemic mistake that changed medicine forever

Fonte: nationalgeographic.com

A misunderstanding about the microbe that actually causes the flu created a ripple effect that changed the future of U.S. drug development, clinical trials, and pandemic preparedness.

In 1892 a prominent German bacteriologist named Richard Pfeiffer made a mistake—one that would have an enormous impact on the pandemic of 1918 and the next century of medicine.

In the late 19th century scientists had begun to draw connections between microorganisms and human illnesses. But no one had convincingly linked a specific pathogen to influenza, which back then was essentially a catchall term for a suite of infectious respiratory symptoms that had swept through populations for millennia.

To solve the mystery, Pfeiffer was examining sputum from 31 patients who had died in the flu pandemic of 1889-90, which killed about a million people worldwide. That’s when he discovered a new type of bacterium. “The influenza bacilli appear as tiny little rodlets,” he reported in the British Medical Journal in January 1892, and he found them exclusively in pandemic victims. “In view of these results, I consider myself justified in pronouncing the bacilli just described to be the exciting causes of influenza.”

He named the bacterium Bacillus influenzae, but it quickly became known known as Pfeiffer’s bacillus. After all, Pfeiffer was chief of the Scientific Section of the Berlin Institute for Infectious Diseases and a protégé of Robert Koch, a microbiology pioneer. His stature was such that people readily believed him. This was still the case 26 years later, in 1918, when people began dying at alarming rates from an infectious respiratory disease.

21 marzo 2022

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