Influenza virus antigenic variation, host antibody production and new approach to control epidemics | Virology Journal BioMed Central Open Access Influenza virus antigenic variation host antibody production and new approach to control epidemics Jiezhong Chen 1 and Yi-Mo Deng2 Address 1John Curtin School of Medical Research Australian National University Canberra ACT 2601 Australia and 2WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza North Melbourne VIC 3051 Australia Email Jiezhong Chen - Yi-Mo Deng - Corresponding author Published 13 March 2009 Received 30 May 2008 Accepted 13 March 2009 Virology Journal 2009 6 30 doi l 743-422X-6-30 This article is available from http content 6 1 30 2009 Chen and Deng licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Influenza is an infectious disease and can lead to life-threatening complications like pneumonia. The disease is caused by three types of RNA viruses called influenza types A B and C each consisting of eight negative single-stranded RNA-segments encoding ll proteins. Current annual vaccines contain two type A strains and one type B strain and are capable of inducing strong antibody responses to both the surface glycoprotein hemagglutinin and the neuraminidase. While these vaccines are protective against vaccine viruses they are not effective against newly emerging viruses that contain antigenic variations known as antigenic drift and shift. In nature environmental selection pressure generally plays a key role in selecting antigenic changes in the antigen determining spots of hemagglutinin resulting in changes in the antigenicity of the virus. Recently a new technology has been developed where influenza-specific IgG antibody-secreting plasma cells can be isolated and .
