Nature：流感疫情催生国际疫病监控合作

时间：2009年6月19日

来源：生物通

编辑推荐：

生物通报道，2009年流感疫情横扫全球，在人们惊叹21世纪的第一场流感大流行来得那么快只时，很学者，科学家都已开始追踪溯源，探寻大流感的源头，为日后的监控防治做准备。

最新一期的Nature（6月18）社论文章也关注疫情的源头。

自6月11日，香港大学的学者管轶等人在Nature在线版发表流感溯源文章以来，关注动物疫情的理念开始入人心。动物学专家学者们也因此至于尴尬的位置。与公共卫生专家不同的是，动物专家所关注的仅是动物的健康，最终关怀的是供给人类的肉制品是否安全。

而新的研究成果证实，2009年的大流感来自猪流感，这株毒株已经在猪群流传多年，并且混入有其他物种的病毒基因，这给人类的健康敲响了警钟。一个不小心，病毒就可能从动物身上跃居到人类身上，这对面对新病毒毫无抵抗力的人类来说无疑是一场灾难。

（了解更多管轶等人Nature研究成果，流感疫情的发展态势，请查看管轶教授专访文章

http://www.ebiotrade.com/newsf/2009-6/2009617154410706.htm）

人类与动物的关系越发是唇亡齿寒般了。这不得不让人想起2009年中国的几例禽流感来。也如本次的流感一样，禽流感经历长久的变异后开始感染人类，幸运的是，禽流感还只是刚刚开始突破种间障碍，没有大面积的传播开来。而猪流感，在猪群上传播多年，终究获得感染人类的能力。

人类不能再对动物疫病掉以轻心！

历经此劫，国际间的动物疫病监测合作将日渐加深。

（生物通小茜）

Nature社论原文

Animal farm: pig in the middle

The 2009 flu pandemic highlights the urgent need for an independent international body for research into human diseases that originate in animals.

When animal pathogens make the leap into humans — as has happened with the 2009 pandemic virus that originated in swine — animal-health scientists can find themselves in an awkward position. Unlike their colleagues in public health, who focus their energies on protecting the planet's 6.8 billion humans, animal-health specialists tend to work through government agencies, whose primary mission is to promote and protect national and international livestock and meat trade.

This focus on commerce can sometimes lead to conflicts of interest, as well as some policy positions that border on denial. Since the first outbreaks of the 2009 pandemic virus in the United States and Mexico, for example, the Paris-based World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) has expended considerable energy trying to keep people from calling the virus 'swine flu'. The OIE's quite legitimate concern is that this nomenclature might adversely affect trade, with countries taking unnecessary measures such as culling herds, or invoking trade bans on pigs and pork. From a strictly scientific point of view, however, there is abundant genetic evidence that the name is appropriate. It is a reassorted swine influenza virus that has jumped from pigs to humans.

The OIE has also played down the possibility that the 2009 pandemic flu might be spreading in pigs, noting that it has not been found in any animals outside of one farm in Canada. But how vigorous has the search been? There is no requirement that the authorities be notified of flu in pigs, as the animals generally recover, and farmers have little incentive to report an outbreak in their herds given the potential repercussions. Furthermore, little funding has been available for extensive surveillance. A case in point is the European Surveillance Network for Influenza in Pigs, whose paltry 100,000 (US$139,000) in annual funding expired in March, just a month before the pandemic strain was first detected. Yet public-health researchers say that if the virus is circulating in pigs, and moving back and forth between pigs and humans, it increases the risk that the virus will genetically reassort into a more dangerous pathogen (see page 894).

The human–animal disease interface is fraught with such competing agendas. But to the OIE's credit, it has had a key role in creating a body that could be a model for a credible, honest broker. Founded jointly with the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in 2005, the OIE/FAO Network of Expertise on Animal Influenza (OFFLU) has been bringing together labs working on surveillance and research of human infectious diseases that have arisen in animals. OFFLU has also been outspoken on the need for countries to share virus samples and sequences for research (see Nature 440, 255–256; 2006) and has built important bridges with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other public-health agencies.

What is needed now is international support for a greatly expanded OFFLU-like network that has enough funding to do its own research and to coordinate global surveillance efforts on influenza and other diseases emerging from animals. The WHO and other public-health organizations should also be made an integral part of the network.

The 2009 pandemic has forced scientists to confront the elephant — or pig — in the room, which is that surveillance of human diseases that originate in animals remains in the nineteenth century (see Nature 440, 6–7; 2006), and is chronically underfunded. Animal- and public-health bodies must now step up and fund a serious joint initiative in this area.