Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 Feb 26;110 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):3689-91. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1107485109. Epub 2012 Jan 17.
We find that the four most recent human influenza pandemics (1918, 1957, 1968, and 2009), all of which were first identified in boreal spring or summer, were preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific. Changes in the phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation have been shown to alter the migration, stopover time, fitness, and interspecies mixing of migratory birds, and consequently, likely affect their mixing with domestic animals. We hypothesize that La Niña conditions bring divergent influenza subtypes together in some parts of the world and favor the reassortment of influenza through simultaneous multiple infection of individual hosts and the generation of novel pandemic strains. We propose approaches to test this hypothesis using influenza population genetics, virus prevalence in various host species, and avian migration patterns.
我们发现，最近的四次人类流感大流行（1918 年、1957 年、1968 年和 2009 年）都是在北方春季或夏季首次发现的，此前赤道太平洋地区都出现过拉尼娜现象。厄尔尼诺-南方涛动的相位变化已被证明会改变候鸟的迁徙、停留时间、适应性和种间混合，因此可能会影响它们与家畜的混合。我们假设拉尼娜现象将不同的流感亚型带到了世界的某些地区，并有利于通过个体宿主的同时多次感染和新型大流行菌株的产生来重组流感。我们提出了使用流感种群遗传学、各种宿主物种中的病毒流行率和鸟类迁徙模式来检验这一假设的方法。
