Speaker
Description
Humans are susceptible to infection with influenza A, B and C viruses. Influenza A viruses (IAV) represent worldwide circulating pathogens that cause annual epidemics and occasionally worldwide pandemics, infecting millions of people. In parallel, several high pathogenic avian influenza viruses (HPAIV) and low pathogenic avian influenza viruses (LPAIV) have (occasionally) crossed the species barrier from birds to mammals/humans upon genetic reassortment (frequently with LPAIV/H9N2 strains) and/or adaptive mutations. This was observed for HPAIV/H5N1, HPAIV/H5N6, LPAIV/H6N1, LPAIV- and HPAIV/H7N9, LPAIV/H9N2, and LPAIV/H10N8, which have successfully infected humans since 1997 causing sporadic infections and/or fatalities. Increasing evidences show establishment of stable lineages of HPAIV/H5N1, HPAIV/H5N8 and LPAIV/H9N2 viruses in chickens worldwide - especially Egypt (EGY) and Germany (GER). This raises concerns that reassortment among these three highlighted strains could generate novel viruses with the ability to cross the species barrier to mammals. For early risk estimation we investigated the impact of genetic exchange between intensively circulating LPAIV/H9N2(EGY/GER) and HPAIV/H5N1(EGY) or HPAIV/H5N8(GER). Based on our results we discuss the influence of specific reassortments on the zoonotic potential of Egyptian HPAIV/H5N1 and German HPAIV/H5N8 in mammals in vitro and in vivo.
Keywords: avian influenza viruses, reassortment, pathogenicity
