Diverse biological characteristics and varied virulence of H7N9 from Wave 5

Linlin Bao; Yuhai Bi; Gary Wong; Wenbao Qi; Fengdi Li; Qi Lv; Liang Wang; Fei Liu; Yang Yang; Cheng Zhang; William J Liu; Chuansong Quan; Weixin Jia; Yingxia Liu; Wenjun Liu; Ming Liao; George F Gao; Chuan Qin

doi:10.1080/22221751.2018.1560234

Diverse biological characteristics and varied virulence of H7N9 from Wave 5

Emerg Microbes Infect. 2019;8(1):94-102. doi: 10.1080/22221751.2018.1560234.

Authors

Linlin Bao¹, Yuhai Bi^{2

3}, Gary Wong^{2

4}, Wenbao Qi⁵, Fengdi Li¹, Qi Lv¹, Liang Wang³, Fei Liu³, Yang Yang², Cheng Zhang³, William J Liu⁶, Chuansong Quan⁶, Weixin Jia⁵, Yingxia Liu², Wenjun Liu³, Ming Liao⁵, George F Gao^{2

3

6}, Chuan Qin¹

Affiliations

¹ a Institute of Laboratory Animal Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) & Comparative Medicine Center, Peking Union Medical Collage (PUMC); Key Laboratory of Human Disease Comparative Medicine, Ministry of Health , Beijing Key Laboratory for Animal Models of Emerging and Reemerging Infectious , Beijing , People's Republic of China.
² b Shenzhen Key Laboratory of Pathogen and Immunity, Guangdong Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Emerging Infectious Diseases, State Key Discipline of Infectious Disease , Second Hospital Affiliated to Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen Third People's Hospital , People's Republic of China.
³ c CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiology and Immunology, Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Disease, Institute of Microbiology , Center for Influenza Research and Early-warning (CASCIRE), Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing , People's Republic of China.
⁴ d Département de microbiologie-infectiologie et d'immunologie , Université Laval , Québec City , Canada.
⁵ e National and Regional Joint Engineering Laboratory for Medicament of Zoonoses Prevention and Control, College of Veterinary Medicine , South China Agricultural University , Guangzhou , People's Republic of China.
⁶ f National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention , Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) , Beijing , People's Republic of China.

Abstract

There was a substantial increase with infections of H7N9 avian influenza virus (AIV) in humans during Wave 5 (2016-2017). To investigate whether H7N9 had become more infectious/transmissible and pathogenic overall, we characterized the receptor binding and experimentally infected ferrets with highly pathogenic (HP)- and low pathogenic (LP)-H7N9 isolates selected from Wave 5, and compared their pathogenicity and transmissibility with a Wave 1 isolate from 2013. Studies show that A/Anhui/1/2013 (LP) and A/Chicken/Heyuan/16876/2016 (HP) were highly virulent in ferrets, A/Guangdong/Th008/2017 (HP) and A/Chicken/Huizhou/HZ-3/2017 (HP) had moderate virulence and A/Shenzhen/Th001/2016 (LP) was of low virulence in ferrets. Transmission was observed only in ferrets infected with A/Anhui/1/2013 and A/Chicken/Heyuan/16876/2016, consistent with the idea that sicker ferrets had a higher probability to transmit virus to naive animals. Given the Varied virulence and transmissibility observed in circulating H7N9 viruses from Wave 5, we conclude that the current public health risk of H7N9 has not substantially increased compared to 2013 and the circulating viruses are quite diverse.

Keywords: H7N9; ferret; influenza; pathogenicity; receptor; transmissibility.

MeSH terms

Animals
Ferrets / virology*
Genotype
Humans
Influenza A Virus, H7N9 Subtype / genetics
Influenza A Virus, H7N9 Subtype / isolation & purification
Influenza A Virus, H7N9 Subtype / metabolism
Influenza A Virus, H7N9 Subtype / pathogenicity*
Influenza, Human / virology
Nose / virology
Orthomyxoviridae Infections / transmission*
Orthomyxoviridae Infections / virology
Pharynx / virology
Receptors, Cell Surface / metabolism*
Viral Proteins / metabolism*
Virulence

Substances

Receptors, Cell Surface
Viral Proteins
sialic acid receptor

Grants and funding

This work is supported by grants from National Key Research and Development Project of China [2016YFE0205800 and 2016YFD0500304], Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB29010102), National Science and Technology Major Project [2016ZX10004222], Emergency Technology Research Issue on Prevention and Control for Human Infection with A(H7N9) Avian Influenza Virus [10600100000015001206], National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [31870163, 31672586 and U1501212], CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences [CIFMS, 2016-I2M-1-014], Sanming Project of Medicine in Shenzhen [SZSM201412003], Shenzhen Science and Technology Research and Development Project [JCYJ20160427151920801 and JCYJ20151029151932602]. G.F.G. is a leading principal investigator of the NSFC Innovative Research Group [81621091]. Y.B. is supported by the NSFC Outstanding Young Scholars [31822055] and Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) [2017122].