Swine flu has blindsided the world

What’s Different (and Dangerous) About Swine Flu?
Kara Rogers - April 29th, 2009

Swine flu has blindsided the world, and the participation of countries in the global effort to control the spread of the virus is now imperative in preventing a pandemic. But why has swine flu put the world on pandemic alert? And what is it about the swine influenza virus that suddenly set it apart from all other influenza viruses?

The first question is relatively simple to answer. The disease is highly infectious and contagious and can be deadly in humans. Furthermore, its outbreak in Mexico City and its subsequent spread to the United States present real opportunity for its spread to other countries worldwide. And, of course, such spread has already happened. With viral containment and isolation now impossible, we are on pandemic alert and must rely on controlling viral spread, rapid reporting of new cases, and warning against travel to and from affected areas to prevent a full-scale catastrophe.Domestic pigs.

However, the second question is much more difficult to answer, because the details of what make swine influenza virus so infectious in humans are largely unknown. The swine virus that is at the root of the current outbreak is called H1N1—the same labeling given to the virus that caused the devastating 1918-19 flu pandemic. But not all H1N1 flu viruses are created equally, and the swine virus appears to be quite different from all other H1N1 viruses.

Different strains of H1N1 are distinguished by any number of genetic variations, including many that affect the hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) proteins found on the surface of the virus. In the case of the emergence of new swine H1N1 variants, several factors are at play, a major one of which is that pigs are susceptible to infection by swine, human, and avian influenza viruses. In addition, influenza viruses from different species have readily interchangeable segments of RNA. Thus, a pig simultaneously infected by human and avian viruses provides the perfect opportunity for a genetic swap between the different viruses.

An Influenza Perfect Storm

This scenario is not as far-fetched as it may seem. In fact, it is believed that sometime in the late 1990s, a sort of perfect storm involving swine, human, and avian influenza viruses took place in pigs in the United States. The result was a so-called triple reassortant swine influenza virus—part swine, part human, and part avian. As time passed, reassortant viruses mutated, and the genes affected were not always the ones encoding the H and N proteins of the viral coat. Mutations occurred in genes still largely unheard of in the public sector, genes like PB1 and PB2, which encode enzymes called RNA polymerases that function in viral replication.

Reassortant H1N1 swine virus appears to be more deadly in pigs than classical H1N1 swine virus, which was first isolated from pigs in the 1930s and did not possess genes from the human and avian viruses. The mutations in polymerase genes and in other viral genes are believed to further increase the virulence of swine influenza viruses, causing severe respiratory disease and death in pigs. Perhaps, the sicker the pigs the more likely the virus is to be spread to humans, whether through physical contact with sick animals or through inhaling infectious virus circulating in the air. Reassortant H1N1 swine influenza virus is common in pigs in the United States, and since the initial reassortant viruses emerged, the number of cases of human swine flu in the United States has increased annually.

A triple reassortant swine H1N1 virus appears to be the cause of the ongoing outbreak, and this virus is infectious and deadly in humans, particularly in people between ages 25 and 40. Why it is causing the death of presumably healthy adults remains unclear. However, all adult deaths from swine flu have occurred only in Mexico, despite the growing number of cases in other countries. This raises serious questions about the outbreak there, especially in light of the fact that adults elsewhere who are affected by the virus and who are treated within 30–48 hours of the onset of flu-like symptoms are experiencing full recovery from their illness.