# 1156
With influenza viruses, the only true constant is change.
Influenza viruses mutate rapidly through a variety of processes that are not entirely understood.
Antigenic shift occurs when viruses replicate and minute errors or mistakes occur in the copies. Often these errors are dead-end mutations, but sometimes the virus can acquire new traits that make it more efficient.
Influenza viruses can also mutate through a process called reassortment, where a virus (which has 8 genetic segments) can swap an entire genetic segment (with scores of amino acids) with another virus, literally trading pieces of genetic material. It is for this reason we worry about the co-mingling of viruses in humans and other `mixing vessels' producing a new, novel influenza virus.
And then there is recombination, where individual amino acids within a gene segment can be swapped. While not fully accepted by the scientific community, the recombination camp (spearheaded by Dr. Henry Niman) is not without supporters.
The bottom line, influenza viruses are constantly changing, and those changes that allow the virus to better adapt to its hosts are the ones that are likely to flourish. We watch, and frankly worry, when we see changes in avian viruses that make them more adapted to human hosts.
This, today, from the New York Times.
Bird Flu Virus Mutating Into Human - Unfriendly Form
Published: October 5, 2007
Filed at 5:33 a.m. ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated to infect people more easily, although it still has not transformed into a pandemic strain, researchers said on Thursday.
The changes are worrying, said Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
"We have identified a specific change that could make bird flu grow in the upper respiratory tract of humans," said Kawaoka, who led the study.
"The viruses that are circulating in Africa and Europe are the ones closest to becoming a human virus," Kawaoka said.
Recent samples of virus taken from birds in Africa and Europe all carry the mutation, Kawaoka and colleagues report in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Pathogens.
"I don't like to scare the public, because they cannot do very much. But at the same time it is important to the scientific community to understand what is happening," Kawaoka said in a telephone interview.
The H5N1 avian flu virus, which mostly infects birds, has since 2003 infected 329 people in 12 countries, killing 201 of them. It very rarely passes from one person to another, but if it acquires the ability to do so easily, it likely will cause a global epidemic.
All flu viruses evolve constantly and scientists have some ideas about what mutations are needed to change a virus from one that infects birds easily to one more comfortable in humans.
Birds usually have a body temperature of 106 degrees F, and humans are 98.6 degrees F usually. The human nose and throat, where flu viruses usually enter, is usually around 91.4 degrees F.
"So usually the bird flu doesn't grow well in the nose or throat of humans," Kawaoka said. This particular mutation allows H5N1 to live well in the cooler temperatures of the human upper respiratory tract.
H5N1 caused its first mass die-off among wild waterfowl in 2005 at Qinghai Lake in central China, where hundreds of thousands of migratory birds congregate.
That strain of the virus was carried across Asia to Africa and Europe by migrating birds. Its descendants carry the mutation, Kawaoka said.
"So the viruses circulating in Europe and Africa, they all have this mutation. So they are the ones that are closer to human-like flu," Kawaoka said.
Luckily, they do not carry other mutations, he said.
"Clearly there are more mutations that are needed. We don't know how many mutations are needed for them to become pandemic strains."
