The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-pandemic Influenza connection: Coincident or causal?

[tetano]

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Feb 26;110 Suppl 1:3689-91. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1107485109. Epub 2012 Jan 17.
The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-pandemic Influenza connection: Coincident or causal?
Shaman J, Lipsitch M.
Source

Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032.
Abstract

We find that the four most recent human influenza pandemics (1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009), all of which were first identified in boreal spring or summer, were preceded by La Ni?a conditions in the equatorial Pacific. Changes in the phase of the El Ni?o-Southern Oscillation have been shown to alter the migration, stopover time, fitness, and interspecies mixing of migratory birds, and consequently, likely affect their mixing with domestic animals. We hypothesize that La Ni?a conditions bring divergent influenza subtypes together in some parts of the world and favor the reassortment of influenza through simultaneous multiple infection of individual hosts and the generation of novel pandemic strains. We propose approaches to test this hypothesis using influenza population genetics, virus prevalence in various host species, and avian migration patterns.

PMID:
22308322
[PubMed - in process]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22308322

 

[gsgs]

Re: The El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO)-pandemic Influenza connection: Coincident or causal?

1918 and 2009 however did not envolve birds

better include 1963(H3N8 --> horses) , 1998 (H3N2--> swine)
1978 (H1N1--> swine)

1871
1890
1830
...

and then it's still unclear what the mechanism should be
mixing/reassorting of Eurasian and American bird-flu-genes, maybe

so a more logical approach would be to associate the
separations of Eurasion and North American strains
in the segments with extreme weather events
or looking for poultry outbreaks

And looking for other signs of such mixing bird populations
bird DNA , ornitological archives,


they hypothetize that birds were involved
in 2008/2009 :
> Such infection of birds with swine influenza
> has been documented (30)

that sounds unlikely, absurd to me. Never afaik was it documented, that birds
spread mammalean viruses. Nor do the sequences suggest this.

And then they ignore that the 1918 virus likely went from birds to swine
5-10 years before.


sorting la Nina years 1880-2009 by magnitude, I get:
1818,1976,1974,1951,1989,1890,1956,1910,2000,1999,2008,1971,1887,1938,1904