Enough with the reassortments! 🧬

A team of researchers from the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Minnesota has been studying how vaccination can reduce swine influenza A reassortment in pigs. That's important because influenza viruses are highly adaptable and mutate quite easily. The ability to prevent reassortment would significantly lower the risk of new strains developing and infecting other species – including humans. The bottom line is that it’s key for preventing issues on farms and among people. 

• Reassortment refers to when the gene segments of an influenza virus are rearranged if multiple strains are present in a single cell. That’s what happened with the H1N1 flu – the variant that was the cause of the 2009 outbreak resulted from a triple reassortment of bird, swine, and human flu viruses.

💉 The virus is also one of the biggest threats to the swine industry. A recent study has shown that even though breakthrough infections are common among vaccinated pigs, the viruses can’t multiply as quickly as they normally would. That’s to say that vaccinated pigs have shorter infections and fewer reassorted viruses.