By giving fly cells the flu, scientists have identified scores of host genes the pathogen requires for successful infection, revealing a raft of potential new pressure points to thwart the virus.

It’s the case of the missing flu virus. When the flu isn’t making people sick, it seems to just vanish. Yet, every year, everywhere on Earth, it reappears in the appropriate season and starts its attack. So where does it go when it disappears? Does it hibernate, lying dormant in a few people and preparing for its next onslaught? Does it bounce around from the Northern hemisphere to the Southern hemisphere and back, following the seasons?

Scientists have developed a new, faster way to create human monoclonal antibodies against infectious disease by tapping the immune system at the peak of its powers.

Outbreaks of the most common type of influenza virus, A (H3N2), are seeded by viruses that originate in East and Southeast Asia and migrate around the world, new research has found. This discovery may help to further improve flu vaccines and make the evolution of the virus more predictable.

In parts of the United States, influenza is peaking, and while this year's vaccine isn't as effective as usual, the flu's misery can be avoided.

Delaware's Division of Public Health reported 323 flu cases during the first full week of February. From the beginning of October through the end of January, there were about 200 reported cases.

A University of Alberta study recommends that workers on pig farms be monitored as part of influenza pandemic preparedness, after a child on a communal farm in Canada was diagnosed with swine flu in 2006.

Two Mississippi young people have died from the flu, that is the start of what could be a tough flu season, the state health department's spokesman said.

An anti-virus drug attacks influenza A by changing the motion and structure of a proton channel necessary for the virus to infect healthy cells, according to a recently published research paper by two Iowa State University chemists.

Emerging subtypes of influenza A virus hold the potential to initiate a world-wide epidemic in the next few years, according to World Health Organization officials. However, almost all type A influenza viral strains have become resistant to amantadine and rimantadine, two drugs that make up one of only two classes used to treat the flu.

The influenza A virus does not lie dormant during summer but migrates globally and mixes with other viral strains before returning to the Northern Hemisphere as a genetically different virus, according to biologists who say the finding settles a key debate on what the virus does during the summer off season when it is not infecting people.

A universal influenza vaccine that has been pioneered by researchers from VIB and Ghent University is being tested for the first time on humans by the British-American biotech company Acambis. This vaccine is intended to provide protection against all ‘A’ strains of the virus that causes human influenza, including pandemic strains.