Origins of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in swine in Mexico
- Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States
- National Institutes of Health, United States
- Laboratorio Avi-Mex, Mexico
Abstract
Asia is considered an important source of influenza A virus (IAV) pandemics, owing to large, diverse viral reservoirs in poultry and swine. However, the zoonotic origins of the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic virus (pdmH1N1) remain unclear, due to conflicting evidence from swine and humans. There is strong evidence that the first human outbreak of pdmH1N1 occurred in Mexico in early 2009. However, no related swine viruses have been detected in Mexico or any part of the Americas, and to date the most closely related ancestor viruses were identified in Asian swine. Here, we use 58 new whole-genome sequences from IAVs collected in Mexican swine to establish that the swine virus responsible for the 2009 pandemic evolved in central Mexico. This finding highlights how the 2009 pandemic arose from a region not considered a pandemic risk, owing to an expansion of IAV diversity in swine resulting from long-distance live swine trade.
Article and author information
Author details
Reviewing Editor
- Richard A Neher, Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany
Version history
- Received: April 8, 2016
- Accepted: June 13, 2016
- Accepted Manuscript published: June 28, 2016 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: July 22, 2016 (version 2)
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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Origins of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in swine in Mexico
eLife 5:e16777.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.16777
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