Pre-existing H1N1 immunity reduces severe disease with cattle H5N1 influenza virus
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The emergence of highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza in dairy cattle herds across the United States has caused multiple mild human infections. There is an urgent need to understand the risk of spillover into humans. Here we show that pre-existing immunity from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic influenza virus provided protection from mortality and severe disease to ferrets intranasally infected with bovine H5N1. Additionally, a differential tissue tropism was observed with little dissemination to organs outside the respiratory tract in H1N1 immune ferrets and significantly less bovine H5N1 virus was found in nasal secretions and the respiratory tract. Taken together, these results suggest that mild disease in humans may be linked to prior immunity to human seasonal influenza viruses.
