2009 H1N1 (Swine) Flu Origin - Early research results

[Jim Pivonka]

Here is the link: http://www.kansascity.com/437/v-print/story/1175886.html

Takeaways:

The new H1N1 influenza virus that continues to spread through the U.S. has ancestry in a swine flu outbreak that first struck a North Carolina hog farm more than 10 years ago, according to scientists studying the strain's genetic makeup.

The current strain hasn't shown up in surveillance of U.S. pigs, and it can't be caught by eating pork.

The "Hogfarm Haters" are going to love that one!

Two of the (current strain's eight) segments . . . appear to come from Eurasia and are somewhat mysterious in origin. The other six can be traced to the North American pig outbreak, which turned out to include a combination of avian, swine and human flu.

"This virus was found in pigs here in the United States," Rabadan said in an interview. "They were getting sick in 1998. It became a swine virus."

and (Link: The complete gene sequences are here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genomes/FLU/SwineFlu.html)

Scientists working around the world this week began tracing the virus' origins days after the CDC published its eight-chromosome genetic sequence.

Steven Salzberg, a computational biologist at the University of Maryland, was among the scientists who found that the new H1N1 virus contains strains from past swine viruses, including the one that swept through pig farms in 1998.

Salzberg said he doesn't blame factory farms for the current outbreak, because swine flu is common among pigs. He wants to know more about the H1N1 virus' ancestry.

That would require that scientists have more genetic sequences of swine flu taken from sick pigs over the past decade. Salzberg hopes the CDC will ask animal labs to send their existing samples in for coding.

"We really need many more," Salzberg said. "This outbreak is going to induce us to do that."

Progress, but only the beginnings.

The primary issue outstanding is what mutations will occur in this virus before the next Northern Hemisphere flu season this fall. Will it die out? Will it become more infectuous? Will it become more virulent?

Patents have been issued to viral geneticists who believe that the mutation patterns of these viruses are somewhat predictable, and that predictability can be used to predesign vaccines for "new influenza outbreaks" in advance of the actual outbreak. I don't know how credible these claims are in the larger community of viral geneticists, but the claims got a patent. (What does not, these days?)

I also don't know if the results outlined by this single news report and the researchers quoted in it have been or can be replicated by other researchers - so this is NOT the final word even on this narrow topic.

[ensho]

1. kick

nt