Pengtao Bao, Yang Liu, Xiaoai Zhang, Hang Fan, Jie Zhao, Mi Mu, Haiyang Li, Yanhe Wang, Honghan Ge, Shuang Li, Xin Yang, Qianqian Cui, Rui Chen, Liang Gao, Zhihua Sun, Lizhen Gao, Shuang Qiu, Xuchun Liu, Peter W Horby, Xiubin Li, Liqun Fang, Wei Liu
A four-year-old boy developed recurrent fever and severe pneumonia in April, 2022. High-throughput sequencing revealed a reassortant avian influenza A-H3N8 virus (A/Henan/ZMD-22-2/2022(H3N8) with avian-origin HA and NA genes. The six internal genes were acquired from Eurasian lineage H9N2 viruses. Molecular substitutions analysis revealed the haemagglutin retained avian-like receptor binding specificity but that PB2 genes possessed sequence changes (E627K) associated with increased virulence and transmissibility in mammalian animal models...
November 10, 2022: Nature Communications