Question

Many emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic diseases and tracking down viral origins and reservoirs can be challenging. This video illustrates both the tremendous strides we have made in our understanding of viruses and how fragile humankind remains in the face of infectious agents

1.If you were in charge of distributing one-hundred million dollars in research funds but could only chose one viral disease to provide for, which disease would you endow and why?

2.How do you think the medical and scientific community should use your millions? The Age of Viruses (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Video, 50:39 mins)

Answer 1

1). Influenza can be chosen as a zoonotic infection of interest to spend the research funds.

Influenza is caused by a "flu virus (H1N1)." Different types of influenza viruses include type 1, type 2, and type 3. H1N1 virus spread is due to severe exposure to zoonotic animals (carriers) such as pigs. This virus is pandemic due to its structural complexity of viral lipid membrane with spikes. These spikes are to act as an antigen in the host and also due to extremely fast RNA replication. Its genome is highly complimented with host genome and result in host body produces antibodies (immune response) thereby only during the production immune response to the flu virus result in disease symptoms.

The genetic reassortment (mixing of genetic material) is possible with the influenza virus as its genome consists of eight RNA segments. Previously, the occurrence of influenza pandemics was evidenced by the reassortment between the human and avian virus forms, and also the recent H1N1 outbreak is also a result of genetic reassortment.

Geography, discovery, reasons for emergence Mechanisms of potential worldwide spread: The most lethal viral event in the last 100 years is the Spanish flu pandemic. It is a culling event because the 1918 Influenza Strain was extremely Virulent because of the presence of hemagglutinin (HA), neuraminidase protein leading to different levels of pathogenicity. Approximately 20 to 100 million people were killed during this pandemic attack.

H1N1 influenza has been the cause of four pandemics in recent history: 1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009. The fast RNA replication property of the virus made it evolve the antigenic shift so that the same virus can efficiently attack different times though we developed resistance to any one type or two types of the virus.

We need to take influenza vaccine every year because the influenza viruses adapt to the developed immunity and evolve new virions that are not sensitive to the previous vaccines. So, influenza vaccines are released every year according to the newly evolved strains.