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As toll mounts, researchers peer into the H1N1 death spiral http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1259430173
The lungs were heavy, difficult to deflate, and beefy looking. To the pathologist who held them, they belied their own anatomy, resembling a liver.
They belonged to an Ontarian who, until contracting H1N1, had been healthy and in early middle age. Within days, the person was dead, being dissected at Toronto's University Health Network. Pathologists concurred on the likely mechanism of death -- an immune system reaction, most common among the young and people in their prime, called a cytokine storm. "Once the inflammatory cascade gets established, it's like a runaway freight train -- it's just going to keep going," said pathologist David Hwang, who consulted on the samples. "In some of these patients, even if you clear the virus, the cytokine storm has already taken hold and it takes on a life of its own."
It's a fatal irony: A robust immune system can be hazardous to your health. In some cases, it's the reaction to the flu -- more so than the virus itself -- that sets off the death spiral.
So far, 309 people have died across Canada since the pandemic began in the spring, and roughly one-third had no underlying health conditions.
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'Doc Jim says:
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Sounds more like a PERFECT cytokine storm.
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