Prediction of the next pandemic influenza strain (not predicted by me) / 預測下一代大流行性流感毒株 (不是我預測的)

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Originally I didn’t want to write this post, but somehow I felt I use try to use Steemit to document this so that later if it ever came true, what I written here will be permanently market, and cannot be edited after 7 days.

So, many of you might know I am a microbiologist, and I usually focus my work on bacteria. Today under a special occasion, I was caught up in an influenza discussion between a few PIs (principle investigators of projects). And they were talking about the likelihood of the next pandemic strains that would likely affect Hong Kong. And one of the PIs strongly believed the next one to hit Hong Kong would be the H2 series.

Many of you here might not have the clear picture of what influenza is, it is a virus that can infect a wide range of mammals and birds. The influenza can be further classified in to strain A, B and C, majority of the outbreaks in human involves the influenza A. The virus strains are usually named as H __ N __, where the underscore are numbers. H representing the Hemagglutinin and N representing the Neuraminidase, both of which are surface proteins of the virus and they are being used to further classify the virus into different subtypes, such as H5N1, H7N9 etc.

Hong Kong has been a hot spot for influenza spreads, Hong Kong had basically been some how affected by the major historical outbreaks of influenza, at least tracing back to 1918.

• 1918 was the year that the Spanish flu outbreak, the circulating strain was H1N1.
• 1957 marked the beginning of the Asian flu, which H2N2 was the circulating strain
• 1968, the pandemic broke out and was first detected in Hong Kong, thus named the Hong Kong Flu, H3N2 was responsible
• 1997, the Avian flu, which virus normally infecting birds, broke the species barrier and start to infect human. H5N1 was responsible and ended up with massacre in the poultry market.
• 2009, the Swine flue, which virus from pigs managed to mix with that of avian and human flu virus. H1N1 was responsible.

Smaller outbreaks were skipped out, but the PI made such prediction of the next severe outbreak would be caused by a H2 backbone influenza, given the trend was H1, H2, H3, H5 and H1, thus the next should be H2.

Believe it or not, but indeed H2 and H3 does stand a very good chance to pop up as a new potential pandemic strains. But who knows, and of course I hope I never need to know the answer for this kind of infectious pandemics, as millions around the globe would suffer.

Photo source
pixabay

Ref:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/28/history-major-flu-pandemics
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971207000355

本來我不太想寫這篇文章，但不知何故，我覺得我應該嘗試使用一下Steemit來記錄這個，所以如果它有一天成真，我在這裡寫的就是永久性的記錄，7天後不能編輯。

你們中許多人可能會知道我是微生物學家，我通常把工作重點放在細菌上。今天在特殊的情況下，我被參與一個流感討論, PI們（即項目的主要研究者）進行對流感討論。他們談論到下一次可能影響香港的流行性感冒大爆發的可能性。而其中一個PI強烈相信下一個打擊香港將是H2系列。

這裡的許多人可能不清楚流感是什麼，它是一種可以感染各種哺乳動物和鳥類的病毒。流行性感冒可以進一步分類為菌株甲，乙和丙，人類爆發感染的大多數涉及甲型流感。病毒株通常命名為H _ N _，其中下劃線為數字。 H代表血凝素，N代表神經氨酸酶，兩者都是病毒的表面蛋白，它們被用於進一步將病毒分類為不同的亞型，如H5N1，H7N9等。

香港一直是流行性感冒傳播的熱點，香港基本上受到流感病史上所有的重大影響，至少可追溯到一九一八年。

• 1918年是西班牙流感爆發的一年，流感病毒是H1N1。
• 1957年標誌著亞洲流感的開始，H2N2是循環病毒
• 1968年，這一流行病爆發，首次在香港被發現，因此命名為香港流感，H3N2負上了大部分罪名
• 1997年，病毒通常感染鳥類的禽流感破壞了物種屏障，開始感染人類。 H5N1令到最終在家禽市場發生了雞隻大屠殺事件。
• 2009年，豬流感，豬的病毒與禽流感和人類流感病毒混合。 H1N1包底出擊了。

由於H1，H2，H3，H5和H1的趨勢，下一次應該是H2，因此，雖然較小的爆發被跳過了，但是PI對下一次嚴重爆發的預測將是由H2骨幹流感引起。
相信與否，但H2和H3確實很有可能成為新的潛在大流行病毒。但沒人知道，當然，我希望我不需要知道這種傳染性大流行病的答案，因為全球數以百萬計的人都會受苦。

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