Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Your birth year predicts your odds if flu pandemic were to strike

Your birth year predicts—to a certain extent—how likely you are to get seriously ill or die in an outbreak of an animal-origin influenza virus, according to a study co-led by researchers from the University of Arizona ...

Medications

Pain reliever naproxen shows anti-viral activity against flu

The over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drug naproxen may also exhibit antiviral activity against influenza A virus, according to a team of French scientists. The finding, the result of a structure-based investigation, is ...

Medical research

Stem cells repair lung damage after flu infection

Guided by insights into how mice recover after H1N1 flu, researchers at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital, together with researchers at A*STAR of Singapore, have cloned three distinct stem cells from ...

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Influenzavirus A

Influenzavirus A Influenzavirus B Influenzavirus C Isavirus Thogotovirus

Influenzavirus A is a genus of the Orthomyxoviridae family of viruses. Influenzavirus A includes only one species: Influenza A virus which causes influenza in birds and some mammals. Strains of all subtypes of influenza A virus have been isolated from wild birds, although disease is uncommon. Some isolates of influenza A virus cause severe disease both in domestic poultry and, rarely, in humans. Occasionally viruses are transmitted from wild aquatic birds to domestic poultry and this may cause an outbreak or give rise to human influenza pandemics.

Influenza A viruses are negative sense, single-stranded, segmented RNA viruses. There are several subtypes, labeled according to an H number (for the type of hemagglutinin) and an N number (for the type of neuraminidase). There are 16 different H antigens (H1 to H16) and nine different N antigens (N1 to N9). The newest H type (H16) was isolated from black-headed gulls caught in Sweden and the Netherlands in 1999 and reported in the literature in 2005.

Each virus subtype has mutated into a variety of strains with differing pathogenic profiles; some pathogenic to one species but not others, some pathogenic to multiple species.

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