The world is already at its worst with the present COVID-19 pandemic, and it doesn't want another pandemic. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that pigs in China are often getting infected with a strain of influenza that has the potential to jump to humans and trigger a pandemic. The article reports on the influenza virus genotype 4 (G4) reassortant (shuffling and swapping of genes) Eurasian avian-like (EA) H1N1 virus. The strain is an unusual blend of three lineages which includes the H1N1 virus that caused the 2009 pandemic. The G4 virus can cause more severe infection than H1N1 viruses. But, what makes the G4 variant more alarming, is that it contains all the essential features for a pandemic virus.
The study analyzed nearly 30,000 nasal swabs, collected from 2006 to 2018, from pigs at slaughterhouses in China and found that the EA H1N1 virus was predominant in the swine population in Europe and Asia from 2011 to 2013. But, 2014 onwards its dominance has been replaced by G4 variant and the only genotype predominant among pigs in China. In another study, Sun and colleagues—demonstrated lab dish studies on how G4s can infect and copy themselves in human airway epithelial cells. The viruses easily infect and transmit between ferrets, a well-known animal model to study human influenza.
Influenza viruses often jump from pigs to humans, even though most do not transmit between humans yet, it is an onus for the scientists working on infectious disease to take this as an early warning. Researchers worldwide must take the matter very seriously and work on vaccines in advance to prevent the virus that has the potential to cause another mayhem like COVID-19.
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