Has your house been infiltrated by the sneezes, coughs, shivers and fevers? It is that time of year again where we all brace ourselves for the coming of the flu.

Usually when we say we have flu we are talking about an adenovirus infection.

It isn’t bad enough to get you a day off, just makes you feel a bit miserable and snotty.

Proper flu on the other hand is caused by influenza and is not only debilitating it can be deadly. In readiness for this winter and the bugs it will bring, get clued up on real flu and how you can protect yourself.

Influenza is one extremely clever little virus. It is an RNA virus, so it has a single strand of code rather than the more robust double strand of DNA.

The big advantage of having only RNA is that the virus can mutate and adapt very quickly.

This is certainly true of two of the most important bits of code in the influenza RNA that provide the recipe for the proteins that coat the surface of influenza and allow it to attach to our cells.

These proteins are called neuraminidase (pronounced new–ra-min-a–daze) and haemagglutinin (pronounced he-ma-glutin-in).

So far we have identified more than 10 different haemagglutinin (H1- H10) proteins and nine different neurominidase (N1-N9) proteins.

Outbreaks of flu will usually be referred to by the type of H and N proteins seen on the surface of that particular flu strain. For example H1N1 caused Spanish flu during WWI and H5N1 caused bird flu back in 2004. It is also the particular combination of H and N proteins that determine how severe the strain will be. If our immune system recognises the H and N proteins it will be able to clear the infection quickly.

However, if the H and N proteins are not recognised there will be a delay before our immune system can get to work giving the virus an opportunity to spread and infection to take hold.

So we want our immune system to be ready to fight right away.

As with all viruses, unfortunately antibiotics will be completely ineffective, they just don’t kill viruses, so our best tool is vaccination.

The challenge is keeping up with the changing flu virus. We do this by changing the vaccine every year and by including three disabled strains of flu that we think are the ones likely to be the greatest threat.

Scientists are working to try and find some feature of the influenza virus that doesn’t change so rapidly and could then be targeted by vaccines or drugs that would last longer and be effective against all strains of flu.

Until then, prevention is the best protection – good hygiene and getting the vaccine if you are in a high-risk group (your local GP should have mailed or texted you if you are).

With tissues at the ready, poised to catch your next sneeze, who would you back – scientist or nano super villain?

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