每年流感流行都会导致全球几十万甚至百万人的死亡，是全球公共卫生防控的重要对象。流感病毒在流行过程中会快速变异，产生了不同危害程度的流感病毒变异株，因而会导致流感病毒在不同的流感季节中死亡人数不一样。但目前对流感导致人死亡的危害程度的估计主要依赖于监控，往往只能在流感流行了一段时间后才能相对准确地估计，不利于各国的卫生部门快速有效地制订流感防治的策略。如果能在病毒出现的早期就估算出其潜在的危害性，将为科学有效地制订流感防控政策提供重要依据。
中国科学院生物物理研究所蒋太交课题组提出了一个新的宿主-病毒相互作用模型，首次建立了病毒导致的超额死亡和其抗原变异程度之间的定量关系，并进一步发展了直接从病毒序列出发快速准确估算流感潜在危害性的计算方法。该研究成果已经在线发表在8月12日的PLoS Computational Biology上。该计算模型被同行专家认为是一个概念上的创新，研究成果将有助于各国卫生部门制订快速有效的流感防控策略。论文的共同第一作者是生物物理研究所助理研究员吴爱平和博士研究生彭友松，国家流感中心舒跃龙教授参与指导了该项研究。该研究得到了国家传染病重大专项和“973”项目的大力支持。
推荐原文出处：
PLoS Comput Biol doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000882
Correlation of Influenza Virus Excess Mortality with Antigenic Variation: Application to Rapid Estimation of Influenza Mortality Burden
Aiping Wu1#, Yousong Peng1,2#, Xiangjun Du1,2, Yuelong Shu3, Taijiao Jiang1*
1 National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 2 Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, 3 State Key Laboratory for Molecular Virology and Genetic Engineering, National Institute for Viral Infectious Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China
The variants of human influenza virus have caused, and continue to cause, substantial morbidity and mortality. Timely and accurate assessment of their impact on human death is invaluable for influenza planning but presents a substantial challenge, as current approaches rely mostly on intensive and unbiased influenza surveillance. In this study, by proposing a novel host-virus interaction model, we have established a positive correlation between the excess mortalities caused by viral strains of distinct antigenicity and their antigenic distances to their previous strains for each (sub)type of seasonal influenza viruses. Based on this relationship, we further develop a method to rapidly assess the mortality burden of influenza A(H1N1) virus by accurately predicting the antigenic distance between A(H1N1) strains. Rapid estimation of influenza mortality burden for new seasonal strains should help formulate a cost-effective response for influenza control and prevention.
