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. 2015 Mar 25:5:9484.
doi: 10.1038/srep09484.

Reassortant highly pathogenic influenza A H5N2 virus containing gene segments related to Eurasian H5N8 in British Columbia, Canada, 2014

John Pasick  1 , Yohannes Berhane  1 , Tomy Joseph  2 , Victoria Bowes  2 , Tamiko Hisanaga  1 , Katherine Handel  1 , Soren Alexandersen  1
Affiliations

Reassortant highly pathogenic influenza A H5N2 virus containing gene segments related to Eurasian H5N8 in British Columbia, Canada, 2014

John Pasick et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

In late November 2014 higher than normal death losses in a meat turkey and chicken broiler breeder farm in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia initiated a diagnostic investigation that led to the discovery of a novel reassortant highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N2 virus. This virus, composed of 5 gene segments (PB2, PA, HA, M and NS) related to Eurasian HPAI H5N8 and the remaining gene segments (PB1, NP and NA) related to North American lineage waterfowl viruses, represents the first HPAI outbreak in North American poultry due to a virus with Eurasian lineage genes. Since its first appearance in Korea in January 2014, HPAI H5N8 spread to Western Europe in November 2014. These European outbreaks happened to temporally coincide with migratory waterfowl movements. The fact that the British Columbia outbreaks also occurred at a time associated with increased migratory waterfowl activity along with reports by the USA of a wholly Eurasian H5N8 virus detected in wild birds in Washington State, strongly suggest that migratory waterfowl were responsible for bringing Eurasian H5N8 to North America where it subsequently reassorted with indigenous viruses.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Phylogenetic characterization of the hemagglutinin genes of Canadian HPAI H5N2 virus isolates.
The complete hemagglutinin (HA) gene sequences of the Canadian HPAI H5N2 viruses were aligned with H5 genes obtained from NCBI and GISAID EpiFlu™ databases using Clustal W. The supplementary file contains additional phylogenetic trees for the remaining gene segments and a Table that list and acknowledges the sequences included from GISAID. Phylogenetic and molecular evolutionary analysis was conducted using MEGA version 6 and the Maximum Likelihood method based on the Tamura Nei model. The tree with the highest log likelihood is shown. Bootstrap test involved 500 replicates to determine reliability of the inferred tree with only bootstrap values above 70% shown. Black upright triangles, Canadian HPAI H5N2; inverted triangle single Canadian human case of HPAI H5N1. Clade designations are based on WHO/OIE/FAO H5N1 Evolution Working Group nomenclature (http://www.who.int/influenza/gisrs_laboratory/h5_nomenclature_clade2344/en/).
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