ISTOCK, CHALABALANew research published in mBio yesterday (June 5) proposes that dogs may be a potential reservoir for an influenza pandemic. Researchers found three new hybrid canine strains (with porcine and avian origins) in dogs from Southern China.
“The more diversity of viruses there is in an animal reservoir, the higher the chances that it will lead to a version of the virus that is able to jump,” Adolfo García-Sastre, the director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and a coauthor on the paper, tells Science News.
García-Sastre and his colleagues collected 16 viral genome samples from pet dogs diagnosed with respiratory infections in Southern China from 2013-15. Researchers identified three variants usually found in swine and the three new hybrids that formed by mixing with a canine strain. These newly found variants are H1N1, but unlike the H1N1 swine flu, these have hopped from birds to pigs to dogs, ultimately creating ...
