Tuesday, May 5, 2009

What does H1N1 mean?

As you probably already know, pig farmers and Jewish and Islamic interest groups have finally convinced the WHO (World Health Organization) to rename the swine flu virus to the influenza H1N1 virus, but what does H1N1 mean?

Every strain of influenza has an H protein, hemagglutinin, which allows the virus to attach to human host cells, and an N protein, neuraminidase, which destroys mucous. There are multiple types of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, so the numbers that follow H and N describe the specific type of hemagglutinin and neuraminidase found on that strain. Hemagglutinin and neuraminidase are important because they are essential proteins that allow the influenza virus to infect us. For example, influenza causes a soar throat by clearing the protective layer of mucous usually covering the throat cells with neuraminidase, it then binds to the uncovered cell with hemagglutinin, and finally the virus injects itself into the cell and destroys it.

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