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Review
. 2021 Apr 1;11(4):a038620.
doi: 10.1101/cshperspect.a038620.

The Epidemiology, Virology, and Pathogenicity of Human Infections with Avian Influenza Viruses

Dayan Wang  1 , Wenfei Zhu  1 , Lei Yang  1 , Yuelong Shu  1   2
Affiliations
Review

The Epidemiology, Virology, and Pathogenicity of Human Infections with Avian Influenza Viruses

Dayan Wang et al. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med. .

Abstract

Influenza is a global challenge, and future pandemics of influenza are inevitable. One of the lessons learned from past pandemics is that all pandemic influenza viruses characterized to date possess viral genes originating from avian influenza viruses (AIVs). During the past decades, a wide range of AIVs have overcome the species barrier and infected humans with different clinical manifestations ranging from mild illness to severe disease and even death. Understanding the mechanisms of infection in the context of clinical outcomes, the mechanism of interspecies transmission, and the molecular determinants that confer interspecies transmission is important for pandemic preparedness. Here, we summarize the epidemiology, virology, and pathogenicity of human infections with AIVs to further our understanding of interspecies transmission.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
The history of human infections with avian influenza viruses (AIVs). Arrows in red and blue indicate human infections with high-pathogenicity AIVs (HPAIVs) and low-pathogenicity AIVs (LPAIVs), respectively. The length of the arrows represents the time frame during which human cases were reported. (USA) United States of America, (UK) United Kingdom, (ITA) Italy, (NLD) the Netherlands, (CAN) Canada, (EGY) Egypt, (AUS) Australia, (MEX) Mexico, (CHN) China.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Areas with confirmed human cases of avian influenza virus (AIV) infection since 2000. The affected countries are colored in red. Labels indicate cases other than H5N1; imported cases are shown in blue. The map was created with mapchart.net.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Airway tract tissue tropism illustration and the receptor-binding profiles of seasonal influenza viruses, avian H5N1 viruses, and influenza A(H7N9) viruses.
Figure 4.
Figure 4.
Proposed “genetic tuning” mechanism for influenza A(H7N9) viruses. (Created from data in Wang et al. 2014a and Zhu and Shu 2015.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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