Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

by Dr Jeremy Brown

In 2007 a group from New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine had looked at the role of cold air and humidity in the transmission of the flu virus. They used guinea pigs as their guinea pigs. These animals are very susceptible to infection by the human influenza virus. After placing cages of infected guinea pigs next to cages of uninfected ones, the researchers blew air from the former to the latter, while varying both the temperature and the humidity. They found that when the temperature and humidity were both low, there was a high rate of transmission. The virus became less transmissible, however, as the humidity and temperature increased. In fact, once the temperature reached a balmy 86 degrees Fahrenheit (or 30 degrees Celsius) there was no transmission of the influenza virus at all. The uninfected animals remained happy and healthy.