Mase Masaji, Tanimura Nobuhiko, Imada Tadao, Okamatsu Masatoshi, Tsukamoto Kenji, Yamaguchi Shigeo
Department of Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Animal Health, 3-1-5 Kannondai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-0856, Japan.
J Gen Virol. 2006 Dec;87(Pt 12):3655-3659. doi: 10.1099/vir.0.81843-0.
To evaluate the potential pathogenicity to mammals of the recent H5N1 avian influenza A virus, viruses recovered from dead mice infected with A/chicken/Yamaguchi/7/2004 isolated in Japan were examined. All recovered viruses from the brains of dead mice infected with this strain (without any prior adaptation to mice) had substituted the amino acid at position 627 of the PB2 protein from glutamic acid to lysine. Their mouse lethality had increased by approximately 5 x 10(4) times over that of the original virus. Histopathological analysis reinforced the finding that these variants caused more rapid and severe damage to mice than the original virus. This revealed that it might be useful to characterize the recovered virus to assess its potential pathogenicity to mammals.
为评估近期甲型H5N1禽流感病毒对哺乳动物的潜在致病性，对从感染了日本分离的A/鸡/山口/7/2004毒株的死亡小鼠体内分离出的病毒进行了检测。从感染该毒株（未事先适应小鼠）的死亡小鼠大脑中分离出的所有病毒，其PB2蛋白第627位氨基酸已由谷氨酸替换为赖氨酸。它们对小鼠的致死率比原始病毒提高了约5×10⁴倍。组织病理学分析进一步证实，这些变异体对小鼠造成的损害比原始病毒更快、更严重。这表明，对分离出的病毒进行特征鉴定可能有助于评估其对哺乳动物的潜在致病性。
