Daniel Zinder, Trevor Bedford, Edward B. Baskerville, Robert J. Woods, Manojit Roy, Mercedes Pascual
(Submitted on 15 Aug 2014)
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 has not yet been established. In this study, we incorporate time-varying migration rates in a Bayesian MCMC framework focusing initially on migration within China and, to and from North-America, as case studies, and later on global communities.
Results: Both global migration and migration between and within large geographic regions is clearly seasonal. On a global level, windows of immigration (in migration) map to the seasonal timing of epidemic spread, while windows of emigration (out migration) to epidemic decline. Seasonal patterns also affect the probability that local lineages go extinct and fail to contribute to long term viral evolution. The probability that a region will contribute to long term viral evolution as a part of the trunk of the phylogenetic tree increases in the absence of deep troughs and with reduced incidence variability.
Conclusions: Seasonal migration and rapid turnover within regions is sustained by the invasion of ‘fertile epidemic grounds’ at the end of older epidemics. Thus, the current emphasis on connectivity, including air-travel, should be complemented with a better understanding of the conditions and timing required for successful establishment. This will better our understanding of seasonal drivers, improve predictions, and improve vaccine updating by identifying strains that not only escape immunity but also have the seasonal opportunity to establish and spread. Further work is also needed on additional conditions that contribute to the persistence and long term evolution of influenza within the human population, such as spatial heterogeneity with respect to climate and seasonality.
Haldane's Sieve 