Influenza A virus has been known to be an important respiratory pathogen and cause of several epidemics and devastating pandemics leading to loss of life and resources across the globe. The M2 ion channel protein is highly conserved and essentially required during the trafficking, assembly, and budding processes of virus, thus an attractive target for designing antiviral drugs. We designed several 10-23 DNAzymes (Dz) targeting different regions of the M2 gene and analyzed their ability to specifically cleave the target RNA in both cell-free system as well as in cell culture using transient transfections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: A sudden increase in the number of novel influenza A virus (pH1N1-2009) infection prompted us to compare the clinical presentation and outcomes of patients infected with pH1N1-2009 and seasonal influenza A virus during the post-pandemic phase.
Methods: During the period August 13 to September 27, 2010, case records of 106 patients with severe influenza like illness (ILI) and respiratory complications who underwent diagnostic testing by real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for confirmation of pH1N1-2009 were retrospectively studied.
Results: Nineteen (17.