The U.S. researchers say that the survivors of the devastating influenza pandemic of 1918 are still protected from the virus.

Reported in the journal Nature Sunday, the report said that the 32 people who survived the 1918 flu all had antibodies in their blood to efficiently kill the deadly strain of the H1N1 flu.

This could provide a new approach and help develop emergency treatments to battle future epidemics that could be triggered by bird flu.

The survivors, now aged 91 to 101, showed antibodies which 90 years later still afforded protection to the survivors.

Dr. James Crowe of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who helped lead the study said, "It was very surprising that these subjects would still have cells floating in their blood so long afterward."

The 1918 Spanish flu outbreak at the end of World War One killed an estimated 50 million to 100 million people and has been called the most devastating epidemic in history affecting healthy adults as well.

Though the scientists still don’t know what caused this outbreak to be so lethal, they do fear that if a new outbreak caused by bird flu were to hit, it could be as deadly. In an attempt to try to control such an eventuality, scientists are studying the antibodies in the survivor’s blood.

The scientists said the antibodies were used to cure infected mice successfully from the killer virus and the antibodies were especially powerful wherein they needed only a small amount of antibodies to kill the virus.

Antibodies from people with experimental shots for the H5N1 avian influenza now circulating in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa are being collected. Crowe feels the antibodies from survivors might make a good interim treatment while a vaccine is formulated, manufactured and distributed.