Influenza Terms
Glossary
- Antibodies - Body proteins produced in response to exposure to an antigen foreign substance; antibodies neutralize antigens and render them harmless.153
- Antigen - Any molecule that is recognized by the immune system and that triggers an immune response, such as release of antibodies.154
- Antiviral - Drugs that inhibit either the life cycle or replication of viruses, resulting in decreasing the severity and duration of a viral infection.155
- Asian Flu - Common name for the influenza A strain that killed over a million people around the world in the 1957 pandemic.156
- Drift - A gradual change of the hemagglutinin or neuraminidase proteins on the surface of a particular strain of influenza virus that occurs in response to host antibodies
in humans who have been exposed to it. It occurs on an ongoing basis in both type A and type B influenza strains and necessitates ongoing changes in influenza vaccines.157
- Epidemic - A disease occuring suddenly in a community, region or country in numbers clearly in excess of normal.158
- Gene - Any of the units in chromosomes by which hereditary characters are transmitted.159
- Hemagglutinin - An important surface structure protein of the influenza virus, an essential gene for the spread of the virus throughout the respiratory tract,
enables the virus to attach itself to a cell in the respiratory system and penetrate it.160
- Hong Kong Flu - Common name for the influenza A strain that killed nearly 750,000 people around the world in the 1968 pandemic.161
- Influenza - A serious disease caused by viruses that infect the respiratory tract.162
- Isolate - In microbiology, to obtain a pure strain from a source such as a clinical specimen that may have been part of a mixed primary culture.163
- Neuraminidase - An important surface structure protein of the influenza virus, an essential enzyme for the spread of the virus throughout the respiratory tract,
enables the virus to escape the host cell and infect new cells.164
- Pandemic - Significant person to person spread of a novel antigen causing wide spread disease in humans who are immunologically naive to this new subtype. 165
- Reagents - A substance employed to produce a chemical reaction so as to detect, measure or produce other substances.166
- Reassortment - The rearrangement of genes from two distinct influenza strains to produce a novel viral strain.167
- Replicate - The process of duplicating or reproducing.168
- Sentinel Physicians - Approximately 260 physicians around the United States who report to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the total number of patients seen each week, and the number of those
patients with influenza-like illness by age group, part of the World Health Organization WHO global flu
surveillance network.169
- Shift - The movement of a type A influenza virus strain from other species into humans. The novel strain emerges by reassortment with circulating
human influenza strains or by infecting humans directly. Because they flourish in the face of global
susceptibility, viruses that have undergone antigenic shift usually create pandemics.170
- Spanish Flu - The common name for the influenza A strain that killed over 20 million people around
the world during the years 1918 to 1920; the highest death toll of any pandemic.171
- Strain - A group of organisms within a species or variety.172
- Subtype - A classification of virus among influenza type A viruses. Currently, there are 15 subtypes of
type A influenza.173
- Surveillance - the ongoing systematic collection and analysis of influenza data, and the dissemination
of information to regional and national public health organization, for the purpose of an effective
disease prevention and control program.174
- Type - the feneral or prevailing character of any particular substance or disease; a broad class of influenza.175
- Vaccine - A specific substance that elicits an immune response to prevent infection by a foreign agent.176
- Virologist - A microbiologist specializing in viruses.177
- Virus - One of a group of submicroscopic infectious agents.178
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