Minimal molecular constraints for respiratory droplet transmission of an avian-human H9N2 influenza A virus.

ABSTRACT: Pandemic influenza requires interspecies transmission of an influenza virus with a novel hemagglutinin (HA) subtytpe that can adapt to its new host through either reassortment or point mutations and transmit by aerosolized respiratory droplets. Two previous pandemics of 1957 and 1968 resulted from the reassortment of low pathogenic avian viruses and human subtypes of that period; however, conditions leading to a pandemic virus are still poorly understood. Given the endemic situation of avian H9N2 influenza with human-like receptor specificity in Eurasia and its occasional transmission to humans and pigs, we wanted to determine whether an avian-human H9N2 reassortant could gain respiratory transmission in a mammalian animal model, the ferret. Here we show that following adaptation in the fe

SUBMITTER: Sorrell EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2670882 | biostudies-literature | 2009 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature