Pandemics Flashcards
What hosts exist in flu pandemics?
Humans
Birds
Dogs
Rats
Mammals
What is Tropism in influenza?
Influenza virus infection causes respiratory disease because:
• The influenza virus requires activation by host cell proteases that are only expressed in the respiratory tract
• Virus enters cell using sialic acid receptors on cells, binding to haemagglutinin
• Enters cell and replicates using host cell machinery
What is the replication cycle of influenza?
attachment, penetration, uncoating, replication, assembly, and virion release
How does bird flu infect humans?
- Cleavage in human airway/lung by Clara Tryptase
- Host range barriers prevent frequent infection of humans with avian influenza. Antibodies bind to HA on the outer layer of virus, therefore preventing entry into the cell. However, HA constantly changes due to antigenic drift.
- Infection of humans with unadapted avian influenza viruses can lead to hypercytokinaemia.
What pathology is caused by avian flu?
The alveolar spaces are filled with a mixed mononuclear/neutrophilic infiltrate, the alveolar walls are thickened, and the septae are edematous. In later stages there is a fibroproliferative response with collagen deposition in the alveolar walls
Why is the large number of bird flus that exist not a problem?
• Since 1997 a number of avian influenza viruses have infected humans, often with high case fatality BUT they have not led to pandemics because they do not transmit through the air between people
What is influenza virus shift?
- DNA has H and N segments
- Reassortment of DNA leads to antigenic shift (recombination)
- Ie H3N2 and H5N1 recmobine to make mutant virus – there are 256 combinations of possible RNA recombinations
- Some of these are not viable, some are not good at infecting, but some can cause pandemics
What are barriers in humans?
- Avian influenza viruses can infect human lower airway but NOT URT using a2,3SA receptors
- Lack of infection in URT cells, or appropriate cells type in upper airway cells may explain lack of transmission of avian influenza from human to human
- Adaptation for transmission through air occurs in other genes such as polymerase, NA and elsewharee in HA can increase replication, stability and spread.
What are the requirements of a pandemic?
- A pandemic virus will have novel antigenicity.
- A pandemic virus will replicate efficiently in human airway.
- A pandemic virus will transmit efficiently between people.
What are the big flu pandemics?
- 1918 influenza virus and all subsequent human viruses of 20th century have PB2 627K .
- Human H5N1 and H7N9 infections associated with severe disease carry PB2 E627K mutation.
- Avian influenza viruses co-opt ANP32A to support RNA replication but cannot utilize shorter mammalian ANP32 homologues unless they mutate PB2
How do pandemics happen?
Which strains have occurred in the past century?
How does flu transmission occur?
- Birds grown in farms can transmit easily
- Regarding human transmission,
- Aerosol transmitted
- Through droplets, mainly in shared air spaces
- Through formites (hand to hand to nose)
- Mucus is a strong infection barrier – but viral neuroaminidase counters it
- Efficiency of receptor binding and virion stability also determine the pandemic potential
What is Swine flu?
- Influenza virus also circulates in pigs (H1/3)
- H1N1 swine influenza spread globally over a few weeks
- Nearly 9000 hospitalizations in the UK, more than 800 deaths
- Globally 200,000 deaths
What is the history of swine flu?
- Seropositivity in London and Birmingham >40% in children by September 2009 (Miller et al. 2010)
- Case fatality ~ 0.02%
- Mild disease in majority of cases.
- 50% of those hospitalized were previously healthy (FLUCIN Thorax 2010).
- Elderly were relatively spared because People alive in 1920-1940 had been infected with antigenically similar virus to pH1N1 2009 (Spanish flu H1N1).
- pH1N1 in the UK 2009; spread by children in schools in the first wave. Third wave worst.