Rhiza Labs FluTracker Forum

It's very late now here downunder.

What does all this mean?

Now that pH1N1 has moved into swine populations worldwide, evolution of swine H1N1, H1N2, and H3N2 viruses that can infect humans will be greatly accelerated.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Commentary

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/03071 ... gland.html

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Does that necessarily mean more severe flus for humans, or just variety but not necessarily any more virulent as far as severity of illness and death?

It means that the H1N1 (H1N2 / H3N2) has MANY options. It seems that the polymerase cplex (human PB1 and avian PB2 / PA) offers a significant selective advantage in humans and swine, and now those 3 genes are pairing up with the other 3 genes (NP, MP, and NS) to create a new series of triple reassortants which have many different H and N combnations that involve versions that have been in humans previously, allowing for many more jumps from swine to human.

The swine sequences have many combinations including chnages at positions 156-159 as well as 186, 188, 225, 227, 230 which can be mixed and match via recombination to create a more evolved virus. D225G and D225N are clearly transmissible in swine and easy transmission of those changes could be catestrophic, as happened in 1918.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Thanks for the explanation. Should we sort of expect more serious flu strains in the upcoming years, then? And I would assume that having had pH1N1 will not grant protection from these potential new mutations of flu?

The main driver of the mixing and matching is immunological escape and these latest H1N2 isolates have H and N genes that are not closely related to pandemic H1N1.

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www.twitter.com/hniman

Thank you.

So everyone is fair game for these newly mutating flu strains. I don't see how it would be possible to create any vaccines for such a tangled bunch of flu strains that are constantly mixing up with each other.