TY - JOUR AU - Daum, Luke AU - Shaw, Michael AU - Klimov, Alexander AU - Canas, Linda AU - Macias, Elizabeth AU - Niemeyer, Debra AU - Chambers, James AU - Renthal, Robert AU - Shrestha, Sanjaya AU - Acharya, Ramesh AU - Huzdar, Shankar AU - Rimal, Nirmal AU - Myint, Khin AU - Gould, Philip T1 - Influenza A (H3N2) Outbreak, Nepal T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2005 VL - 11 IS - 8 SP - 1186 SN - 1080-6059 AB - In July 2004, an outbreak of influenza A (H3N2) was detected at 3 Bhutanese refugee camps in southeastern Nepal. Hemagglutination inhibition showed that ≈40% of the viruses from this outbreak were antigenically distinct from the A/Wyoming/3/03 vaccine strain. Four amino acid differences were observed in most of the 26 isolates compared with the A/Wyoming/3/2003 vaccine strain. All 4 substitutions are located within or adjacent to known antibody-binding sites. Several isolates showed a lysine-to-asparagine substitution at position 145 (K145N) in the hemagglutinin molecule, which may be noteworthy since position 145 is located within a glycosylation site and adjacent to an antibody-binding site. H3N2 viruses continue to drift from the vaccine strain and may remain as the dominant strains during the 2005–2006 influenza season. Thus, the 2005–2006 Northern Hemisphere vaccine strain was changed to A/California/7/2004, a virus with all 4 amino acid substitutions observed in these Nepalese isolates. KW - Keywords: Influena A KW - H3N2 KW - Hemagglutinin KW - genetic drift KW - variant KW - Nepal DO - 10.3201/eid1108.050302 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/11/8/05-0302_article ER - End of Reference