Health : swine influenza

What is H1N1?

This virus is a brand new strain of influenza A H1N1. While other forms of H1N1 cause the common "seasonal" flu, this strain has never been detected before in swine or humans.
It appears to contain the DNA of: North American swine influenza; a swine influenza virus typically found in Asia and Europe; human influenza A; and a North American avian influenza.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Dr. Anne Schuchat calls it "an unusually mongrelized mix of genetic sequences. "Why have we stopped calling it 'swine flu'? The name was changed to dispel the misconception that the virus derived from pig products. The name change came after about 15 countries, including China and Russia, slapped restrictions on imports of live pigs and pork from the United States, Canada and Mexico, and after Egypt needlessly ordered that all 250,000 pigs in the country be slaughtered. The CDC was the first to use the term "swine flu" after initial analysis showed the virus had many of the characteristics of a swine flu. Further tests revealed it also contained genetic material from a human flu virus and avian flu virus. After undergoing genetic changes (called "antigenic shift"), what likely started as a swine flu has now become a human swine flu.