Flu viruses take one-way ticket out of Asia, then travel the world

Study in Science may lead to improvements in flu vaccine design

Seasonal influenza strains constantly evolve in overlapping epidemics in Asia and sweep the rest of the world each year, an international research team has found.

These findings suggest that by focusing surveillance efforts on East and Southeast Asia, researchers may be able to extend their forecast of the flu strains most likely to cause epidemics, which may in turn help experts decide which strains should go in the flu vaccine each year.

The study, by a team of researchers from Europe, Australia, Japan and the United States, appears in the 18 April issue of the journal Science, which is published by AAAS, the nonprofit science society.

“The flu virus is constantly mutating, so it’s a major challenge for public health as well as a fascinating example of evolution in action. This study advances our knowledge of how new flu strains spread across the globe and how epidemics arise,” said Katrina Kelner, Science’s deputy managing editor, life sciences.

Colin Russell of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and his colleagues analyzed 13,000 samples of influenza A (H3N2) virus, collected across six continents from 2002 to 2007 by the World Health Organization Global Influenza Surveillance Network. This subtype of influenza is currently the major cause of flu-related illness and death in humans.

The researchers compared physical differences in a surface protein, called hemagglutinin, across the different samples. Hemagglutinin is the primary target of the immune response, and even small changes can allow the virus to evade the immune system and cause disease.

In a subset of the samples, the researchers also compared the sequences of the gene that codes for hemagglutinin.

Together, these analyses allowed the researchers to identify different strains of A (H3N2) as they arrived at new locations around the world over the five-year period. The results revealed that strains emerge in East and Southeast Asia and then about six to nine months later reach Europe and North America. Several months later still, the strains arrive in South America. Essentially, once the strains leave East and Southeast Asia they enter an evolutionary graveyard.

“The ultimate goal of our collaboration is to increase our ability to predict the evolution of influenza viruses. This study is one step along that path and in particular highlights the importance of ongoing collaborations and surveillance in East and Southeast Asia, and of expanding these collaborations in the future,” said Derek Smith of the University of Cambridge, who is the corresponding author of the study.