December 2-8 is National Influenza Vaccination Week. It was established in 2005 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to highlight the importance of continuing immunization throughout the holiday season. This year the push to immunize against flu comes as the disease has begun to increase substantially throughout the United States, as shown in the …
Derek Smith, Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics, University of Cambridge, U.K., has developed a method for visualizing antigenic evolution by creating two-dimensional maps in a process called antigenic cartography. These maps are made with data that provide information on the antigenic properties of the pathogen. In the case of influenza virus, the data come from …
After my lecture on influenza pathogenesis and evolution at the Northeast Laboratory Conference 2010 in Portland, Maine, I was asked if it is necessary to receive the influenza vaccine every year. This question was precipitated by my statement that the 2010-11 trivalent influenza vaccine contains the same swine-origin H1N1 strain as last year€™s monovalent vaccine. …
When will the 2009 swine-origin influenza virus become a seasonal strain? While prediction is very hard, especially of the future (at least according to Yogi Berra), examining past pandemics can be informative. The 1968 pandemic began with the emergence of a novel H3N2 influenza virus in Hong Kong in July 1968. First isolates (stars) were …
In a recent study of influenza virus reassortment in ferrets, the authors used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to search for viruses with RNA segments from the 2009 pandemic H1N1 strain and seasonal H1N1 and H3N2 strains. I thought you might like to see how I did a similar experiment in 1979 – a very different …
The second RNA segment of the influenza virus genome encodes the PB1 protein – part of the viral RNA polymerase – and, in some strains, a second protein called PB1-F2. The latter protein is believed to be an important determinant of influenza virus virulence. The absence of a full-length PB1-F2 protein has been suggested as …
