Zoonoses Public Health . Possible bidirectional human-swine and subsequent human-human transmission of influenza virus A(H1N1)/2009 in Japan

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Zoonoses Public Health


. 2022 May 10.
doi: 10.1111/zph.12960. Online ahead of print.
Possible bidirectional human-swine and subsequent human-human transmission of influenza virus A(H1N1)/2009 in Japan


Moegi Kuroda ¹ , Tatsufumi Usui ^{1 2} , Chiharu Shibata ² , Haruka Nishigaki ² , Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi ^{1 2}



Affiliations

• PMID: 35538641
• DOI: 10.1111/zph.12960

Abstract

In 2019, sows at a swine farm in Japan showed influenza-like illness (ILI) shortly after contact with an employee that exhibited ILI. Subsequently, a veterinarian became sick shortly after examining the sows and was diagnosed with influenza A virus (IAV) infection. Then, her family also contracted the infection. Subsequently, Pandemic A(H1N1)2009 viruses were isolated from all samples obtained from the sows, veterinarian and her family. Whole-genome analysis of the isolates confirmed that the viruses belonged to the same lineage (6B.1A) and the genome sequences obtained from all of the isolates were almost identical to each other. Furthermore, an epidemiological survey revealed no contact between veterinarians or their families and influenza patients prior to the onset of illness. These results strongly indicated a case of bidirectional infection between humans and sows. At the same time, we found a few unique mutations in the IAV genomes corresponding to the host species. The mutations that occurred in the virus after it was transferred from the farm worker to the sows were not observed in the humans infected from the sows, probably as a result of the mutations reverting to the original nucleotides. These results demonstrate that the bidirectional transmission of IAV is a potential risk for the next pandemic outbreak due to the emergence of new mutant strains.

Keywords: H1N1 subtype; influenza A virus; orthomyxoviridae infections; swine diseases; veterinary medicine; zoonoses.