New Strain Of H1N1 Swine Flu Virus Identified In Brazil
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June 17, 2009 by fluoutbreak
Scientists in Brazil say they have isolated and identified a new strain of the A(H1N1) swine flu virus from a patient who was hospitalized in São Paulo in April and who has since made a complete recovery. The scientists don’t know if the new strain causes more severe infections. The new strain came from a sample isolated from a 26-year old São Paulo man who started to have symptoms of flu shortly after returning from Mexico. He was hospitalized on 24 April and has since made a full recovery. While in hospital the patient gave a sample for analysis.
A team at the Instituto Adolfo Lutz in São Paulo, led by virologist Dr Terezinha Maria de Paiva, isolated the new strain, A/São Paulo/1454/H1N1, from this sample at the end of April.
Using electron microscopes, another team at Instituto Adolfo Lutz, led by Cecília Luiza Simões, looked at nucleotide sequences in the new strain.
They looked in particular at segments number 4 and 7. Segment 4 codes for the protein Hemagglutinin (HA) which is responsible for virus infectivity and triggers the production of antibodies in the human immune system. Segment 7 codes for the matrix proteins (MP) M1 and M2, which help the virus to develop and maintain its structure.
When they compared segment 4 and segment 7 of the new A/São Paulo/1454/H1N1 strain against the novel swine flu reference strain A/Califórnia/04/H1N1 they found that segment 7 appeared to be “completely conserved” while segment 4 showed a number of discrete alterations in nucleotide and amino acid sequences.
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