Noncumulative sequence changes in the hemagglutinin genes of influenza C virus isolates.

Sequence analysis and comparison of hemagglutinin (HA) genes of different influenza C viruses isolated between 1947 and 1983 reveals that (1) the extent of difference among the HA genes is independent of the year in which these viruses were isolated and that (2) changes in the HA genes do not appear to accumulate with time. These results suggest that epidemiologically dominant variants of influenza C viruses do not emerge successively with time and that C virus variants derived from multiple evolutionary pathways cocirculate at any one time. Thus the epidemiology of influenza C viruses differs markedly from that of influenza A viruses, which is characterized by the emergence of successive variants. Based on the nucleotide sequence data, we propose different evolutionary models for influenza A and influenza C viruses.