ShareThisJacky Bruglia is on the front lines in the battle against a baffling new strain of influenza, and she takes an odd delight in being part of what she calls "something big."
Bruglia is a microbiologist at the Public Health Laboratory in Sacramento County. It's one of the first U.S. facilities to handle confirmed cases of a swine flu that has killed scores in Mexico and sickened dozens in the United States. It's stoking concern among health officials scrambling to better understand the virus.
"It's pretty exciting to be part of something big, to do our part," Bruglia said.
Health departments recently have been preparing for a pandemic, a biological attack or another health emergency. Federal and state officials insisted this week they are ready. Those at the local level echo that sentiment.
Dr. Anthony Gonzalez, chief of the county health lab, likened himself to a firefighter -- prepared for crisis.
"As reports spread across the country, what we're seeing now is a picture emerging," Gonzalez said. "You need to know about (swine flu's) virulence and how this virus can spread. And you can't know that until you start with some very specific laboratory data."
Men and women on the front lines, such as Bruglia, work in hidden-away laboratories dressed in lab coats, masks and surgical gloves.
It may not be glamorous work, but it's vital to understanding how diseases spread and how they can be contained.
Doctors initially identify suspected cases. They flag patients who not only show signs of the flu but may have had contact with a documented case or may have traveled to an infected area.
Swab samples are then sent to the county lab, where they're broken down into their molecular components. The viral RNA -- akin to a person's DNA -- is isolated, then further analyzed to see whether it is an influenza A virus, which is among a family of viruses that include garden varieties of seasonal flu as well as long-known strains of swine flu.
The sample is further tested to see whether it can be identified as one of two common variants of swine flu.
If it's not, there is a higher probability that the virus may be that of the new strain -- and it's sent to the state laboratory in Richmond. The sprawling facility, overlooking San Pablo Bay, can test about a hundred samples a day.
Its primary goal "is to test samples that are related to the events going around the state," said Bonnie Sorensen, chief deputy director of the California Department of Public Health.
The laboratory has sophisticated technology -- including a machine sent by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta -- and expertise that most local laboratories cannot afford.
The state's role is to help local officials screen for the swine-influenza virus and predict where further infections could spread, Sorensen said. "We're watching these cases one by one."
Scientists from across the country also are trying to better understand the origin and evolution of this new strain, said Nicole Baumgarth, an associate professor at the University of California-Davis Center for Comparative Medicine.
Baumgarth usually studies infectious diseases, including influenza, in mice, but the information learned about the virus could have garnered interest from the wider scientific community, she said.
Identifying a virus is "the groundwork for everything we do," she said, "and in understanding how the virus will behave."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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