Research Activities

Research is essential to preparing for a pandemic. Expanding research on influenza viruses will lead to better understanding of how these viruses change over time and how the viruses spread. From this research will come new ways to prevent and treat influenza, including how to effectively use vaccines and antivirals.

General Research Activities  

Virus Research  

• Mapping Flu's Trek through Our Cells (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  With just 11 proteins of its own, an influenza virus particle needs a lot of help in its quest to make more of itself. The cells in the human respiratory tract are unwilling hosts, forced to aid the virus at each stage of its progress: getting in; making copies of itself (replication); and getting all the new viruses out of the infected cell. Cells fight this hostile take-over and the flu virus, in turn, has ways to avoid the defensive maneuvers.
• Second Research Team Finds Same Common Achilles’ Heel in Seasonal and Pandemic Flu Viruses (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  Researchers have identified a common Achilles’ heel in a wide range of seasonal and pandemic influenza A viruses. The study found an infection-fighting protein, or human antibody, that neutralizes various influenza A virus subtypes by attaching to these viruses in the same place. This common attachment site provides a constant region of the flu virus for scientists to target in an effort to develop a so-called universal flu vaccine. Such a vaccine would overcome the annual struggle to make the seasonal flu vaccine match next year’s circulating flu strains and might help blunt emerging pandemic influenza viruses as well.
• Scientists Identify Lab-Made Proteins That Neutralize Multiple Strains of Seasonal and Pandemic Flu Viruses (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  Scientists have identified a small family of lab-made proteins that neutralize a broad range of influenza A viruses, including the H5N1 avian virus, the 1918 pandemic influenza virus and seasonal H1N1 flu viruses.

Vaccine Research  

• NIH Experts Describe Influenza Vaccines of the Future (National Institute of of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  Efforts to grow the vaccine virus in cells rather than eggs are currently under way and there is consideration of the addition to influenza vaccine of immune-stimulating adjuvants to be used in certain groups of individuals.
• NIH Scientists Advance Universal Flu Vaccine (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  In experiments with mice, ferrets and monkeys, the investigators used a two-step immunization approach to elicit infection-fighting antibodies that attacked a diverse array of influenza virus strains.
• Initiative for Vaccine Research (World Health Organization)
  
  Read about WHO's actions to guide, support, and facilitate the development, clinical evaluation, and world-wide access to safe, effective and affordable vaccines against infectious diseases.

Personal Protective Equipment  

• Face Mask Use and Control of Respiratory Virus Transmission in Households (CDC)
  Study concludes that household use of face masks is associated with low adherence and is ineffective for controlling seasonal respiratory disease. However, during a severe pandemic when use of face masks might be greater, pandemic transmission in households could be reduced.

Prediction/Modeling  

• NIAID Scientists Propose New Explanation for Flu Virus Antigenic Drift (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  This model predicts that decreasing the immunologically naïve population — by increasing the number of children vaccinated against influenza, for example — could slow the rate of antigenic drift and extend the duration of effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccines.
• Questions and Answers: EID article "Estimates of the Prevalence of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, United States, April-July 2009"
  (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
  Through July 2009, a total of 43,677 laboratory-confirmed cases of 2009 H1N1 were reported in the U.S., which is likely a substantial underestimate of the true number.  Correcting for under-ascertainment using a multiplier model, researchers in this study estimate there may have been between 1.8 million and 5.7 million cases during this time period, including 9,000-21,000 hospitalizations.
• The Next Influenza Pandemic: Can It Be Predicted?
  (Journal of the American Medical Association)
  Scientists at the National Institutes of Health discuss why predicting the next pandemic is so difficult and outline steps that can be taken to better understand the behavior of the virus.
• Models of Infectious Disease Agents: Publications (National Institute of General Medical Sciences)
  Research results of computational models that simulate disease spread and evaluate different intervention strategies. Some studies report preliminary findings on the origin, infectiousness and likely spread of the 2009 H1N1 virus.

Learning from the Past  

• New Study Re-examines Bacterial Vaccine Studies Conducted During 1918 Influenza Pandemic (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  Secondary infections with bacteria such as Streptococcus pneumoniae, which causes pneumonia, were a major cause of death during the 1918 flu pandemic and may be important in modern pandemics as well.
• Dynasty: Influenza Virus in 1918 and Today (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  Researchers find that all human-adapted influenza A viruses of today — both seasonal variations and those that caused more dramatic pandemics — are descendents, direct or indirect, of the 1918-1919 virus.
• Early Pandemic Flu Wave May Protect Against Worse One Later (National Institutes of Health)
  Evidence from the worldwide influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 indicates that getting the flu early protected many people against a second deadlier wave.
• Interregional Spread of Influenza Through United States Described by Virus Type, Size of Population and Commuting Rates and Distance (National Institutes of Health)
• 1918 and 2009 Pandemic Influenza Viruses Lack a Sugar Topping: Finding Could Aid Vaccine Design (NIAID)
  Study defines an unexpected similarity between two pandemic-causing strains of influenza and provides new understanding of how pandemic viruses evolve into seasonal strains, and, importantly, provides direction for developing vaccines to slow or prevent that transformation.
  Researchers find that the spread of yearly flu epidemics in an area within the US is closely connected with people going to and from work. 

Technology Transfer  

• Influenza Technologies Available for Product Development
  Learn how HHS facilitates the world-wide development of new influenza technologies

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H1N1 (Swine) Flu Specific Research  

• A Single Base-Pair Change in 2009 H1N1 Hemagglutinin Increases Human Receptor Affinity and Leads to Efficient Airborne Viral Transmission in Ferrets  (PloS ONE)
• NIH Study Models H1N1 Flu Spread
  (National Institutes of Health)
• NIH-Funded Scientists Find 2009 H1N1 Pandemic Influenza Vaccine Protects Mice from 1918 Influenza Virus
  (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Clinical Aspects of Pandemic 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Infection
  (The New England Journal of Medicine)
• The Severity of Pandemic H1N1 Influenza in the United States, from April to July 2009: A Bayesian Analysis (PLoS Medicine)
• New York Autopsies Show 2009 H1N1 Influenza Virus Damages Entire Airway (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Immune System of Healthy Adults May Be Better Prepared Than Expected to Fight 2009 H1N1 Influenza Virus (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Questions and Answers: EID article "Estimates of the Prevalence of Pandemic (H1N1) 2009, United States, April-July 2009" (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
• Studies in Animals Suggest 2009 H1N1 Virus May Have Biological Advantage Over Seasonal Influenza Viruses  (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Transmission and Pathogenesis of Swine-Origin 2009 A(H1N1) Influenza Viruses in Ferrets and Mice (Science)
• Pathogenesis and Transmission of Swine-Origin 2009 A(H1N1) Influenza Virus in Ferrets (Science)
• Spread of a Novel Influenza A (H1N1) Virus via Global Airline Transportation (PDF – 563KB) (The New England Journal of Medicine)
• Emergence of a Novel Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus in Humans  (The New England Journal of Medicine)
• NIAID and 2009 H1N1 Influenza (Swine Flu) (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Triple-Reassortant Swine Influenza A (H1) in Humans in the United States, 2005–2009  (The New England Journal of Medicine)

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H5N1 (Bird) Flu Specific Research  

H5N1: Virus Research  

• Human Antibodies Protect Mice from Avian Flu (National Institutes of Health)

H5N1: Vaccine Research  

• Questions and Answers: H5N1 Avian Flu Vaccine Trials (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  
  Questions and answers about testing and evaluating potential avian flu vaccines for people.

H5N1: Learning from the Past  

• Scientists Isolate Genes that Made 1918 Flu Lethal (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
  Researchers identify a set of three genes that helped underpin the extraordinary virulence of the 1918 virus.
• Bacterial Pneumonia Caused Most Deaths in 1918 Influenza Pandemic (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  Study finds that pneumonia was caused when bacteria that normally inhabit the nose and throat invaded the lungs along a pathway created when the virus destroyed the cells that line the bronchial tubes and lungs.
• New Study Describes Key Protein from Highly Pathogenic H5N1 Avian Flu Virus and How it Might Mutate (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
  
  Summary of research results comparing the structure of an H5 protein from a highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 avian flu virus to the same proteins from other pandemic flu A viruses, including the deadly 1918 virus.
• Mouse Study Reveals New Clues about Virulence of 1918 Influenza Virus (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases)
• Questions and Answers: Reconstruction of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic Virus (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention)
  
  Learn how CDC's research to piece together the virus responsible for the 1918 pandemic influenza virus is guiding preparation for a potential pandemic influenza.

H5N1: Virus Sharing  

• WHO Procedures for Obtaining Release of H5N1 Sequences to the Public Domain (World Health Organization)
  
  Find out how the WHO collaborates with an international network of laboratories and countries to obtain H5N1 sequencing data.

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