Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Alan Dove, Rich Condit, and Kathy Spindler
Vincent, Alan, Rich, and Kathy discuss recent outbreaks of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in Yosemite National Park and novel swine-origin influenza in the US midwest, and isolation of the Heartland virus from two patients in Missouri with severe febrile illness.
Click the arrow above to play, or right-click to download TWiV 199 (73 MB .mp3, 101 minutes).
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Links for this episode:
- Hantavirus outbreak in Yosemite (ProMedMail)
- Hantavirus in Yosemite (CDC)
- CDC page on hantavirus
- Summary of hantavirus outbreak (Avian Flu Diary)
- Swine-origin influenza outbreak in midwest (MMWR)
- Lyn Finelli interview on swine-origin H3N2 (Microbeworld)
- Transmission of vH3N2 in ferrets (PNAS)
- New phlebovirus from Missouri (NEJM)
- TWiV on Facebook
- Letters read on TWiV 199
Weekly Science Picks
Alan – Insane in the Chromatophores (Vimeo)
Rich – Golden Goose Awards
Kathy – Euler’s Disk (YouTube)
Vincent – Ignorance: How it Drives Science by Stuart Firestein
Listener Pick of the Week
Adam – Leigh Van Valen
Send your virology questions and comments to twiv@microbe.tv.
In regards to the swine influenza story…a whole slew of reassortments between the pandemic human H1N1, which jumped back into swine and various classical swine origin strains are now occurring. Anywhere from 0 to 5 pH1N1 segments are found in the last 2 years within the swine H3N2 strains, don’t quote me, but I believe the one in the press lately says “only” the M segment of pH1N1….but at its heart ALL are derived from the TRIG-cassette. I’ve been doing alignments on the pH1N1 human and the swine H3N2 isolates of the last 2 years and I can tell you that besides HA and NA the other 6 genome segments (NS1, PB1, PB2, etc) are still highly similar between human and swine. What I find very interesting is high-path H5N1 is just fine in pigs…in fact pigs seem to tolerate many influenza strains with only minor symptoms. What host factors do swine have or do not have compared to humans that allow this? So little known about influenza in swine.
With respect to HFRS, if you are an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society – you’re in trouble!
Dorian