Mori S I, Nagashima M, Sasaki Y, Mori K, Tabei Y, Yoshida Y, Yamazaki K, Hirata I, Sekine H, Ito T, Suzuki S
Department of Microbiology, Tokyo Metropolitan Research, Institute of Public Health, Japan.
Arch Virol. 1999;144(1):147-55. doi: 10.1007/s007050050491.
We analyzed the hemagglutinin (HA) genes of influenza A viruses consisting of 6 strains isolated from cerebrospinal fluids of patients with encephalopathy and 3 isolates from throat washes of patients without central nervous system symptoms during the 1997-1998 season in Tokyo. Aligned 9 amino acid sequences showed 7 common substitutions compared with A/Wuhan/359/95 (vaccine strain used in the season in Japan), which were allocated to three different antigenic sites on the H3 HA molecule. It is noted that a novel substitution at the receptor-binding site (Tyr-137 to Phe) was found exclusively in the isolates from the patients with encephalopathy.
