Current insight into the antigenicity and virulence of H5N1 Virus

Abhinaba Ghosh¹*
¹Division of Environmental Biotechnology, School of Biosciences and Technology, VIT University, Vellore-14, Tamil Nadu
* Corresponding Author : abhinaba09@vit.ac.in

Received : -     Accepted : -     Published : 21-12-2009
Volume : 1     Issue : 2       Pages : 18 - 19
Int J Microbiol Res 1.2 (2009):18-19
DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.9735/0975-5276.1.2.18-19

Conflict of Interest : None declared

The Influenza virus is highly potent in causing epidemics and pandemics. It has caused three major pandemics with one more into light. The Spanish pandemic during 1918-19 caused around 50 million deaths world wide. A lot has been studied on influenza but yet it forms a major obstacle to prevent it from spreading its menace repeatedly. Sometime back the H5N1 strain was considered to be the agent of pandemic but yet again the sporadic evolution of A/H1N1 strain spread its menace unexpectedly with an efficient human to human transmission. A lot of studies have been done in molecular levels about the virulence of influenza but yet difficult to control. This is the time to revive our knowledge on influenza and the target of this review is the H5N1 strain of virus because of its extreme virulent nature and thus could be the agent of next pandemic.

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