H7N9 is a virus worth worrying about
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Title |
H7N9 is a virus worth worrying about
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Creator |
Horby, P.
Tatem, A.J. Huang, Z. Gilbert, M. Robinson, Timothy P. Wint, G.R.W. Hayden, F.G. Van Vinh Chau, N. Shindo, N. Carson, G. Gao, Z. Hongjie, Y. Hay, S.I. Farrar, J. |
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Description |
Once again an animal influenza A virus has crossed the species barrier to cause an appreciable number of human cases. Now, two months after the first known human infections with the H7N9 virus, the question is: which of the paths set by previous emerging influenza viruses will it follow? One predecessor, H5N1, generated alarm owing to its high pathogenicity in humans. It has proved to be a tenacious adversary, remaining endemic in poultry across large parts of Asia, but thankfully it has not adapted to humans and person-to-person transmission remains rare. A second, H7N7, caused a number of mostly mild human infections in the Netherlands in 2003, with some evidence of limited person-to-person spread, but extensive poultry culling controlled it. A third, the H1N1 swine influenza virus that emerged in 2009, successfully adapted to humans and caused a pandemic. So will H7N9 prove to be controllable? Will it remain entrenched in animals? Or will it, like the H1N1 virus, stably adapt to humans and cause a pandemic? The fine line between foresight and alarmism can only be drawn in retrospect. Nevertheless, my colleagues and I consider that H7N9 has many of the traits that make a new flu virus worrisome.
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Date |
2013-04
2013-08-26T14:24:00Z 2013-08-26T14:24:00Z |
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Type |
Journal Article
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Identifier |
Horby, P., Tatem, A.J., Huang, Z., Gilbert, M., Robinson, T.P., Wint, G.R.W., Hayden, F.G., van Vinh Chau, N., Shindo, N., Carson, G., Gao, Z., Hongjie, Y., Hay, S.I. and Farrar, J. 2013. H7N9 is a virus worth worrying about. Nature 496(7446):399.
1476-4687 https://hdl.handle.net/10568/33541 https://doi.org/10.1038/496399a |
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Language |
en
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Rights |
Copyrighted; all rights reserved
Open Access |
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Format |
application/pdf
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Publisher |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
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Source |
Nature
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