The researchers focused on people over the age of 60 in high-income countries because data were limited elsewhere in the world. Miloje Savic and Yolanda Penders at the pharmaceutical company GSK’s campus in Wavre, Belgium, led a review of previous estimates of RSV infections and hospitalization rates - they also looked at the case-fatality rate among those who were hospitalized. The first study confirms that RSV is a significant health burden in older populations and the second concludes that the threat is akin to that of influenza. RSV is mainly thought of as a childhood illness, but two meta-analyses have assessed the threat it poses to older people. Nevertheless, viral hybridization might represent a new frontier in the study of co-infections. RSV and flu have long co-circulated, meaning that this phenomenon, if it occurs naturally, is unlikely to be new. But antibodies that usually bind to the flu virus could only weakly target the hybrid particles, suggesting that the particles could escape immunity against flu.Ī final experiment showed the two viruses present in the same cultured airway cells taken from volunteers, but the researchers have not shown that this generates hybrid particles - nor that such particles occur naturally. IAV usually targets only the upper and middle respiratory tract, but this mechanism could theoretically allow hybridized flu viruses to enter the lower respiratory tract that RSV infects.Īntibodies against RSV were able to neutralize the hybrid particles. Importantly, these hybrid particles were able to use RSV proteins to enter cells that did not have the receptor that would ordinarily allow IAV to enter. And the particles could, indeed, bud off and infect more cells. These particles had necks made of proteins and genomic RNA from RSV, and forked heads consisting of IAV proteins and RNA. But because respiratory viruses spread by filamentous particles budding off from cell membranes, the group focused on the hybrid particles that were located on infected cells’ membranes with a filament-based structure. RSV and IAV were seen to physically conjoin in two ways. Part of Nature Outlook: Respiratory syncytial virus But if future work shows that such hybrid particles also form in natural co-infections, this research could have significant clinical implications. The work was conducted solely in cell culture, using cell lines derived from human lungs and lab-adapted virus strains. Researchers at the University of Glasgow, UK, have shown that when RSV and the influenza A virus (IAV) are present in the same cell, they can conjoin to form hybrid viral particles. Clinical studies of such co-infection have so far yielded conflicting results, but some research suggests that it can put people at an increased risk of developing pneumonia. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza typically circulate contemporaneously, meaning co-infections are common. A hybrid viral particle generated during coinfection by influenza A virus and respiratory syncytial virus.

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