- JMM Profile: Swine influenza A virus: a neglected virus with pandemic potential. [Journal Article]J Med Microbiol. 2023 Jan; 72(1)JM
- Swine influenza is an acute respiratory disease of swine caused by swine influenza A virus (SwIAV). The ability of SwIAV to spread bidirectionally from animals to humans (zoonotic), and from humans to animals (reverse zoonotic), drives coinfection that can result in gene segment exchange and elevates the risk of generating viruses with pandemic potential. Compared to human-origin influenza A viru…
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- Targeting influenza A virus by splicing inhibitor herboxidiene reveals the importance of subtype-specific signatures around splice sites. [Journal Article]
- CONCLUSIONS: The discrepancy in M2-dependence emphasizes the importance of M2 in human influenza A virus pathogenicity, which leads to subtype-specific evolution. Our findings provide insights into virus adaptation processes in humans and highlights splicing regulation as a potential antiviral target.
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- Does prior vaccination affect the immune response to seasonal influenza vaccination among older adults? Findings from a prospective cohort study in a Northeastern Province of Thailand. [Journal Article]
- CONCLUSIONS: Influenza vaccination elicited good humoral response in older Thai adults. While seroconversion seemed attenuated in persons previously vaccinated for influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 (the only vaccine strain not to change), this was not apparent for influenza A(H3N2) and B, and prior vaccination was not associated with any inhibition in seroprotection.
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- Comparison of influenza and COVID-19 hospitalisations in British Columbia, Canada: a population-based study. [Journal Article]
- CONCLUSIONS: During first Omicron wave, COVID-19 hospitalisation rates were significantly higher than historical influenza hospitalisation rates for unvaccinated adults but were comparable to influenza for vaccinated adults. For children, in the context of high infection levels, hospitalisation rates for COVID-19 were lower than 2009/2010 H1N1 influenza and comparable (higher for 0-4) to non-pandemic years, regardless of the vaccine status.
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- Does 2x2 airplane passenger contact tracing for infectious respiratory pathogens work? A systematic review of the evidence. [Meta-Analysis]
- We critically appraised the literature regarding in-flight transmission of a range of respiratory infections to provide an evidence base for public health policies for contact tracing passengers, given the limited pathogen-specific data for SARS-CoV-2 currently available. Using PubMed, Web of Science, and other databases including preprints, we systematically reviewed evidence of in-flight transm…
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- Using clinical surveillance software to support effective infection prevention and control for managing COVID-19. [Journal Article]Br J Nurs. 2023 Jan 26; 32(2):52-56.BJ
- The speed, severity and scale of the COVID-19 pandemic challenged infection prevention and control (IPC) efforts at hospitals worldwide. Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Dorchester had an established pandemic plan, which had been developed in response to the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic in 2009. However, the COVID-19 pandemic developed to a level that modern health care had not seen be…
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- Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses. [Review]
- CONCLUSIONS: The high risk of bias in the trials, variation in outcome measurement, and relatively low adherence with the interventions during the studies hampers drawing firm conclusions. There were additional RCTs during the pandemic related to physical interventions but a relative paucity given the importance of the question of masking and its relative effectiveness and the concomitant measures of mask adherence which would be highly relevant to the measurement of effectiveness, especially in the elderly and in young children. There is uncertainty about the effects of face masks. The low to moderate certainty of evidence means our confidence in the effect estimate is limited, and that the true effect may be different from the observed estimate of the effect. The pooled results of RCTs did not show a clear reduction in respiratory viral infection with the use of medical/surgical masks. There were no clear differences between the use of medical/surgical masks compared with N95/P2 respirators in healthcare workers when used in routine care to reduce respiratory viral infection. Hand hygiene is likely to modestly reduce the burden of respiratory illness, and although this effect was also present when ILI and laboratory-confirmed influenza were analysed separately, it was not found to be a significant difference for the latter two outcomes. Harms associated with physical interventions were under-investigated. There is a need for large, well-designed RCTs addressing the effectiveness of many of these interventions in multiple settings and populations, as well as the impact of adherence on effectiveness, especially in those most at risk of ARIs.
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- Influenza vaccine effectiveness against influenza A subtypes in Europe: Results from the 2021-2022 I-MOVE primary care multicentre study. [Multicenter Study]
- CONCLUSIONS: Despite antigenic mismatch between vaccine and circulating strains for influenza A(H3N2) and A(H1N1)pdm09, 2021-2022 VE estimates against circulating influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 were the highest within the I-MOVE network since the 2009 influenza pandemic. VE against A(H3N2) was lower than A(H1N1)pdm09, but at least one in five individuals vaccinated against influenza were protected against presentation to primary care with laboratory-confirmed influenza.
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- The arithmetic topology of genetic alignments. [Journal Article]
- We propose a novel mathematical paradigm for the study of genetic variation in sequence alignments. This framework originates from extending the notion of pairwise relations, upon which current analysis is based on, to k-ary dissimilarity. This dissimilarity naturally leads to a generalization of simplicial complexes by endowing simplices with weights, compatible with the boundary operator. We in…
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- IFI27 transcription is an early predictor for COVID-19 outcomes, a multi-cohort observational study. [Journal Article]
- CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that prognostic biomarkers targeting the family of IFI27 genes could potentially supplement conventional diagnostic tools in future virus pandemics, independent of whether such pandemics are caused by a coronavirus, an influenza virus or another as yet-to-be discovered respiratory virus.
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- Evaluation of Pre-Pandemic Trivalent COBRA HA Vaccine in Mice Pre-Immune to Historical H1N1 and H3N2 Influenza Viruses. [Journal Article]
- Initial exposure to influenza virus(es) during early childhood produces protective antibodies that may be recalled following future exposure to subsequent viral infections or vaccinations. Most influenza vaccine research studies use immunologically naïve animal models to assess vaccine effectiveness. However, most people have an extensive influenza immune history, with memory cells produced by vi…
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- Which Virus Will Cause the Next Pandemic? [Journal Article]
- One of the most pressing and consequential problems in infectious disease research is to better understand the potential of viruses to cause a pandemic, or, in simple terms, determine which virus will cause the next pandemic. We here define pandemics as WHO-declared pandemics, or disease outbreaks commonly referred to as pandemics that predate the WHO pandemic framework. Despite extensive researc…
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- Multi-Influenza HA Subtype Protection of Ferrets Vaccinated with an N1 COBRA-Based Neuraminidase. [Journal Article]
- The influenza neuraminidase (NA) is a promising target for next-generation vaccines. Protection induced by vaccination with the computationally optimized broadly reactive NA antigen (N1-I COBRA NA) was characterized in both influenza serologically naive and pre-immune ferret models following H1N1 (A/California/07/2009, CA/09) or H5N1 (A/Vietnam/1203/2004, Viet/04) influenza challenges. The N1-I C…
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- A Bivalent Live Attenuated Influenza Virus Vaccine Protects against Drifted H1N2 and H3N2 Clinical Isolates in Swine. [Journal Article]
- Influenza A viruses (IAVs) can cause a highly contagious respiratory disease for many mammalian species. In pigs, IAVs cause high morbidity and low mortality disease in susceptible populations that can have significant financial and production impacts. They can also present opportunities for mutations and gene reassortment, producing influenza strains with pandemic potential. Therefore, it is ver…
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- Generating Minimal Models of H1N1 NS1 Gene Sequences Using Alignment-Based and Alignment-Free Algorithms. [Journal Article]
- For virus classification and tracing, one idea is to generate minimal models from the gene sequences of each virus group for comparative analysis within and between classes, as well as classification and tracing of new sequences. The starting point of defining a minimal model for a group of gene sequences is to find their longest common sequence (LCS), but this is a non-deterministic polynomial-t…
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- Oseltamivir-resistant h1n1 influenza virus: Case report. [Case Reports]J Pak Med Assoc. 2022 Oct; 72(10):2112-2113.JP
- Swine flu is mainly caused by influenza virus strain H1N1. This strain of influenza has been found to cause seasonal flu. Animals are common source of influenza virus, in particular, pigs. Transmissions from animals to humans are reported on several occasions worldwide. These cases are usually mild to moderate in nature and are usually not fatal. Here we describe the case of a healthy woman from …
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- An integrated dual-layer microfluidic platform for multiple respiratory viruses screening. [Journal Article]
- Currently, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the outbreak of a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is spreading rapidly worldwide. Due to the high incidence of influenza coinciding with SARS-CoV-2, rapid detection is crucial to prevent spreading. Here, we present an integrated dual-layer microfluidic platform for specific and highly sensitive SARS-CoV-2, influenza viruses A (FluA) H1N1…
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- Interactomics: Dozens of Viruses, Co-evolving With Humans, Including the Influenza A Virus, may Actively Distort Human Aging. [Journal Article]
- Some viruses (e.g., human immunodeficiency virus 1 and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) have been experimentally proposed to accelerate features of human aging and of cellular senescence. These observations, along with evolutionary considerations on viral fitness, raised the more general puzzling hypothesis that, beyond documented sources in human genetics, aging in our species ma…
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- Enhancing the protection of influenza virus vaccines with BECC TLR4 adjuvant in aged mice. [Journal Article]
- Influenza A virus (IAV) is a leading cause of respiratory disease worldwide often resulting in severe morbidity and mortality. We have previously shown that the Bacterial Enzymatic Combinatorial Chemistry (BECC) adjuvants, BECC438 and BECC470, formulated with an influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA) protein vaccine, offer greater protection from influenza virus challenge in mouse respiratory models …
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- Lidocaine inhibits influenza a virus replication by up-regulating IFNα4 via TBK1-IRF7 and JNK-AP1 signaling pathways. [Journal Article]Int Immunopharmacol. 2023 Feb; 115:109706.II
- Influenza A viruses (IAV), significant respiratory pathogenic agents, cause seasonal epidemics and global pandemics in intra- and interannual cycles. Despite effective therapies targeting viral proteins, the continuous generation of drug-resistant IAV strains is challenging. Therefore, exploring novel host-specific antiviral treatment strategies is urgently needed. Here, we found that lidocaine, …
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- Submerged leaves of live indoor foliage plants adsorb H1N1 influenza virus from suspension. [Journal Article]
- Control of hazardous indoor particles using plants has attracted interest due to the increasing worldwide air pollution and spread of pandemic-causing viruses. However, the interaction between human pathogenic viruses (HPVs) and live plants has not been examined largely due to issues in detecting tiny amounts of infectious viruses in a carrier (such as an aerosol) and the lack of suitable examina…
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- Influenza-Associated Excess Mortality by Age, Sex, and Subtype/Lineage: Population-Based Time-Series Study With a Distributed-Lag Nonlinear Model. [Journal Article]
- CONCLUSIONS: Influenza was associated with substantial mortality in Guangzhou, occurring predominantly in the elderly, even after considering mortality displacement. The mortality burden of influenza B, particularly B/Yamagata, cannot be ignored. Contrasting sex differences were found in influenza-associated excess mortality from respiratory diseases and from cardiovascular diseases; the underlying mechanisms need to be investigated in future studies. Our findings can help us better understand the magnitude and time-course of the effect of influenza on mortality and inform targeted interventions for mitigating the influenza mortality burden, such as immunizations with quadrivalent vaccines (especially for older people), behavioral campaigns, and treatment strategies.
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- Dendritic cell-natural killer cell cross-talk modulates T cell activation in response to influenza A viral infection. [Journal Article]
- Influenza viruses lead to substantial morbidity and mortality including ~3-5 million cases of severe illness and ~290,000-650,000 deaths annually. One of the major hurdles regarding influenza vaccine efficacy is generating a durable, robust cellular immune response. Appropriate stimulation of the innate immune system is key to generating cellular immunity. Cross-talk between innate dendritic cell…
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- Alloferon and Zanamivir Show Effective Antiviral Activity against Influenza A Virus (H1N1) Infection In Vitro and In Vivo. [Journal Article]
- The use of vaccines is the most effective and reliable method for the prevention of viral infections. However, research on evaluation of effective therapeutic agents for use in treatment after infection is necessary. Zanamivir was administered through inhalation for treatment of pandemic influenza A/H1N1 in 2009. However, the emergence of drug-resistant strains can occur rapidly. Alloferon, an im…
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- Results from a test-and-treat study for influenza among residents of homeless shelters in King County, WA: A stepped-wedge cluster-randomized trial. [Randomized Controlled Trial]
- CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest feasibility of influenza test-and-treat strategies in shelters. Additional studies would help discern an intervention effect during periods of increased influenza activity.
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- Revisiting live attenuated influenza vaccine efficacy among children in developing countries. [Review]Vaccine. 2023 01 27; 41(5):1009-1017.V
- Seasonal influenza epidemics cause significant pediatric mortality and morbidity worldwide. Live attenuated influenza vaccines (LAIVs) can be administered intranasally, induce a broad and robust immune response, demonstrate higher yields during manufacturing as compared to inactivated influenza vaccines (IIVs), and thereby represent an attractive possibility for young children in developing count…
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- Experience of School Nurses During Public Health Crises: From 2009 H1N1 Influenza to the COVID-19 Pandemic. [Journal Article]J Community Health Nurs. 2023 Jan-Mar; 40(1):14-27.JC
- CONCLUSIONS: The experiences of school nurses in responding to periodic public health crises over the few decades have contributed to the advancement of an infectious disease response system in schools.
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- Antiviral Activity of Technologically Processed Antibodies to CD4 Receptor against Influenza Infection. [Journal Article]
- The antiviral activity of technologically processed antibodies to CD4 receptor was evaluated a model of sublethal A/California/04/2009 (H1N1)pdm09-induced influenza infection in female BALB/c mice. The technologically processed antibodies increased animal survival rate by 50% in comparison with the placebo group (p<0.05), which correlated with significant inhibition of virus replication in the lu…
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- Peniandranoids A-E: Meroterpenoids with Antiviral and Immunosuppressive Activity from a Penicillium sp. [Journal Article]J Nat Prod. 2023 01 27; 86(1):66-75.JN
- Peniandranoids A-E (1-5), five new meroterpenoids, together with three known analogues (6-8), were isolated from the fermentation of a soil-derived fungus, Penicillium sp.sb62. Their structures including absolute configurations were determined by extensive spectroscopic analysis, and the absolute configurations of compounds 1 and 5 were further elucidated by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. Peni…
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- Immunogenicity and safety of an inactivated enterovirus 71 vaccine coadministered with trivalent split-virion inactivated influenza vaccine: A phase 4, multicenter, randomized, controlled trial in China. [Randomized Controlled Trial]
- CONCLUSIONS: Coadministration of the EV71 vaccine with IIV3 was safe and did not interfere with immunogenicity. These findings support a viable immunization strategy for infants with the EV71 vaccine coadministered with IIV3 in China. This trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT04091880.
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