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Influenza A is a serious disease that causes significant morbidity and mortality, and vaccines against the seasonal influenza disease are of variable effectiveness. In this paper, we discuss use of the $p_{\rm epitope}$ method to predict…
The evolution of the hemagglutinin amino acids sequences of Influenza A virus is studied by a method based on an informational metrics, originally introduced by Rohlin for partitions in abstract probability spaces. This metrics does not…
H1N1 influenza causes substantial seasonal illness and was the subtype of the 2009 influenza pandemic. Precise measures of antigenic distance between the vaccine and circulating virus strains help researchers design influenza vaccines with…
Minimizing time delays in manufacturing vaccines appropriate to rapidly mutating viruses is the key step for improving vaccine effectiveness. The vaccine for the H3N2 flu type has failed for the last two years (~ 15% effective). Here we…
Viral mutations pose significant threats to public health by increasing infectivity, strengthening vaccine resistance, and altering disease severity. To track these evolving patterns, agencies like the CDC annually evaluate thousands of…
The rapid outbreak of bird flu challenges the outcome of effective vaccine for the upcoming years. The recent research established different norms to eliminate flu pandemics. This can be made possible with skilled experimental analyses and…
We study the global spatio-temporal patterns of influenza dynamics. This is achieved by analysing and modelling weekly laboratory confirmed cases of influenza A and B from 138 countries between January 2006 and May 2014. The data were…
Knowledge of the severity of an influenza outbreak is crucial for informing and monitoring appropriate public health responses, both during and after an epidemic. However, case-fatality, case-intensive care admission and…
Background: Influenza A/H3N2 has been circulating in humans since 1968, causing considerable morbidity and mortality. Although H3N2 incidence is highly seasonal, how such seasonality contributes to global phylogeographic migration dynamics…
Understanding the origin of infectious diseases provides scientifically based rationales for implementing public health measures that may help to avoid or mitigate future epidemics. The recent ancestors of a pandemic virus provide…
We define a new parameter to quantify the antigenic distance between two H3N2 influenza strains: we use this parameter to measure antigenic distance between circulating H3N2 strains and the closest vaccine component of the influenza…
Background: The pandemic of influenza A (H1N1) is a serious on-going global public crisis. Understanding its spreading dynamics is of fundamental importance for both public health and scientific researches. Recent studies have focused…
The unfolding of pandemic influenza A(H1N1) for Fall 2009 in the Northern Hemisphere is still uncertain. Plans for vaccination campaigns and vaccine trials are underway, with the first batches expected to be available early October. Several…
Influenza viruses undergo continual antigenic evolution allowing mutant viruses to evade host immunity acquired to previous virus strains. Antigenic phenotype is often assessed through pairwise measurement of cross-reactivity between…
Influenza is a contagious respiratory illness that causes significant human morbidity and mortality, affecting 5-15% of the population in a typical epidemic season. Human influenza epidemics are caused by types A and B, with roughly 25% of…
We introduce a new measure of antigenic distance between influenza A vaccine and circulating strains. The measure correlates well with efficacies of the H3N2 influenza A component of the annual vaccine between 1971 and 2004, as do results…
Influenza viruses mutate rapidly and can pose a threat to public health, especially to those in vulnerable groups. Throughout history, influenza A viruses have caused pandemics between different species. It is important to identify the…
A principal component analysis of a multiple sequence alignement of hemagglutinin sequences of subtype H1 has been performed, the sequences being encoded using the amino-acid property that maximizes the weight of the major component. In the…
Seasonal influenza kills hundreds of thousands every year, with multiple constantly-changing strains in circulation at any given time. A high mutation rate enables the influenza virus to evade recognition by the human immune system,…
On 11 June the World Health Organization officially raised the phase of pandemic alert (with regard to the new H1N1 influenza strain) to level 6. We use a global structured metapopulation model integrating mobility and transportation data…