Influenza zoonosis associated with diet in African mammals

Alex D. Greenwood and Gabor A. Czirjack at the Liebniz Wildlife institute tested three hypotheses to help determine how influenza A is spread among mammals in the African planes. They tested whether relatedness, sociality or diet containing birds were strongly related to prevalence and diversity of influenza in various mammal populations. Closer relations and tighter social groups were hypothesized to allow for easier transmission of the virus which bird diets were posited to allow for easier transformation of influenza A from birds to other hosts. 

While both relatedness and sociality were found to have no significant correlation with prevalence or diversity of influenza, carnivorous diet (specifically a diet including birds) was strongly predictive of these factors. Study of this zoonosis is important when considering the flu in humans because contact with birds (especially water fowl) often results in zoonosis, which can produce new and more dangerous forms of the virus. The fact that contact with birds and consumption of birds reigns most indicative of flu transmission allows a deeper understanding of this zoonotic process including the possibly increased adaptability of bird flu to transfer to new hosts. This suggests that mammalian hosts have less defenses against the avian form of the flu than forms of the flu that have been adapted by other hosts of the same species, an issue that further presses our need to discovery the mechanisms behind the versatile ways in which the flu replicates.

-India Robinson

For more information visit: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/03/190306081659.htm