Uvs Lake H5N1 in Ukraine
Recombinomics Commentary 13:22
March 4, 2008
A partial HA sequence, A/chicken/Lobzenko/01/2008, from the January, 2008 H5N1 outbreak in Lobenzko, Ukraine (see satellite map). has been released. Although the sequence is only 184 BP, it is clearly the Uvs Lake strain of clade 2.2.3, which has been true for all recent H5N1 isolates from western Europe, as well as sequences from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
The 2008 isolate further supports the dominance of this strain, which traces back to the Uvs Lake massive wild bird die off in the summer of 2006.
The spread through Europe was undetected until the summer of 2007, when the strain was identified in the Czech Republic, Germany, and France. The spread widen significantly in recent months.
This strain is not well represented in the recently released human vaccine targets published by WHO. Also under represented was H5N1 in Africa, including Egypt and Nigeria.
The spread and evolution of H5N1 by wild birds is quite predictable, although these changes appear to be under appreciated by those selecting pandemic vaccine targets.
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