New Strain Virus Named Influenza A virus (A/Sao Paulo/1454/2009(H1N1)

A worker holds flu vaccine dispensers at the Sinovac Biotech Ltd. laboratory in Beijing, China, Monday, June 15, 2009. The dispensers are similar to those which the company will use for the Swine Flu vaccine. The company, which obtained the virus seed on June 8 from the United States Center of Disease Control, on Monday launched large scale cultivation of the virus in preparation for production of the vaccine for the Swine Flu virus. (AP Photo/Greg Baker)

Scientists in Brazil say they have isolated and identified a new strain of the A(H1N1) swine flu virus from a patient who was hospitalized in São Paulo in April and who has since made a complete recovery. The scientists don’t know if the new strain causes more severe infections.

The new strain came from a sample isolated from a 26-year old São Paulo man who started to have symptoms of flu shortly after returning from Mexico. He was hospitalized on 24 April and has since made a full recovery. While in hospital the patient gave a sample for analysis.

A team at the Instituto Adolfo Lutz in São Paulo, led by virologist Dr Terezinha Maria de Paiva, isolated the new strain, A/São Paulo/1454/H1N1, from this sample at the end of April.

Using electron microscopes, another team at Instituto Adolfo Lutz, led by Cecília Luiza Simões, looked at nucleotide sequences in the new strain.

Why is the new H1N1 virus subtype and mutation important?


Every couple of decades, a new strain of influenza appears that is far more infectious, allowing it to spread rapidly — including that which occurred during the 1918/1919 H1N1 pandemic, or Spanish flu, which killed a roughly estimated 50 million people and infected at least 500 million.

The newly identified H1N1 virus strain — a mutation from the A(H1N1) swine flu pandemic isolate — may or may not prove more lethal or infectious, but scientists are concerned and vaccine efforts continue.

Additionally, the Insituto Adolfo Lutz website reveals details on A/Sao Paulo/1454/H1N1 but the related Technical Note is written in Portuguese-Spanish requiring translation for most readers. An excerpt and translation instructions follow.

Photo (adaptation) of Hemagglutinin by TimVickers (Wikimedia)

“The structure and receptor binding properties of the 1918 influenza hemagglutinin”

Learn more about hemagglutinin and influenza at the RCSB Protein Data Bank and the multimedia exhibit at California Lutheran. 

Excerpt from the Technical Note from Instituto Adolfo Lutz on a new type of influenza virus A (swine flu):

Human cases of respiratory infection caused by a new type of influenza virus A, subtype H1N1 were of porcine origin reported by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from 21 April 2009. So far, the disease was detected in 73 countries, with 25.3 thousand confirmed cases, 139 of them fatal. The new virus presents a unique combination of gene segments that in the past had been reported between the influenza virus from swine or human origin.

In Chicago, the first case of human infection caused by the new strain was identified in a man of 26 years who presented the symptoms of flu to return from a trip to Mexico. The patient was hospitalized on April 24 at the Institute of Infectious Diseases Emilio Ribas and is fully recovered.

Respiratory secretion sample of this patient was subjected to molecular rt PCR methodology (§ reaà the polymerase chain in real time) with probe specific for the new subtype H1N1 by the team of molecular biologist Claudio Sacchi, and the result for the new viral subtype .

(See the full text and optionally translate via Google)

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