Foreseeing future flu
Although two strains of influenza A have been circulating globally for decades, these strains mutate quickly to try to escape host immunity. Many models exist to predict influenza seasons, but Du et al. have now incorporated evolutionary information to try to forecast upcoming H3N2 seasons in advance. After developing the model, they used it to predict that H3N2 in the pending 2016/2017 season will be at a higher incidence than has been seen recently and will involve substantial antigenic change in the hemagglutinin. Being able to predict this type of information could affect influenza countermeasures worldwide.
- Copyright © 2017 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.