Anticipating Influenza Resistance Evolution (AIRe): Pathways and Strategies
Abstract
Fiscal Year 2014 Peer Reviewed Medical Research Program Focus Program Award Topic Area: Respiratory Health. Influenza manifests as a contagious acute respiratory illness in humans. Influenza A virus (IAV) causes both yearly epidemics and world-wide pandemics. Approximately 30,000 people die from influenza each year in the United States as the result of seasonal epidemics. Influenza significantly impacts the readiness and operations of the U.S. Armed Forces. While mortality is highest in pandemic years, seasonal influenza still has a huge effect on troops. Military ground forces are at high risk for influenza, and new recruits drawn from diverse geographic areas are a particularly vulnerable population. During the 2014 influenza season, ~1.1% of military personnel were affected every week. During the past century, three major influenza pandemics have occurred. The pandemic of 1918-1919 resulted in the deaths of 50-100 million people. This pandemic struck in the middle of World War I and was fostered by the crowded conditions in military camps, sickening 20%-40% of the U.S. Armed Forces. The very young and old as well as those with certain underlying medical conditions, which include many Veterans, are at particularly high risk for serious complications. The operational impact of IAV on our active military readiness is also considerable. IAV disease is especially dangerous in groups of closely quartered, highly skilled personnel coming together from diverse geographic areas. The influenza virus has unique features that allow for rapid development of resistance to current drug treatments and to render the current annual vaccine ineffective. How IAV escapes current preventive strategies and treatments is not fully understood. A major concern is the ability of the virus to travel from different animal hosts and quickly adapt, often creating more virulent strains, which could lead to pandemics. The goal of this Focused Program Award addressing respiratory health is to use multidisciplinary approaches to capture the molecular mechanisms as to how IAV evolves, becoming drug-resistant and more virulent. This information is required to guide future therapeutic strategies. Specifically, our program will identify the changes (mutations) that confer resistance to preventive vaccines and currently available and developing drugs. We will also study how different strains of influenza sometimes become more virulent -- either by mixing up their genomes in a process called reassortment or by adapting to different animal hosts, transitioning from birds or pigs to humans. As part of this program, we will develop new technology for studying viruses. The technology developed by our program will be an invaluable resource for future studies of influenza. This technology will also augment the surveillance and response by the Department of Defense Global Emerging Infections Surveillance and Response System (DoDGEIS), which monitors current circulating strains and predicts the best vaccine to administer to our military forces, Veterans, and the general public.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Apr 04, 2016
- Source ID
- W81XWH1510317
Entities
People
- Robert W. Finberg
Organizations
- United States Army
- University of Massachusetts Medical School