Interactions between influenza A hemagglutinin and host cell receptors

Helal, Soheir F.; El Anany, Mervat G.; AbdulRahman, Eiman M.; Hussein, Amira F.

doi:10.4103/kamj.kamj_29_18

Interactions between influenza A hemagglutinin and host cell receptors

Authors

Abstract

Annual outbreaks of influenza infection are an ongoing public health threat, which kill thousands of people worldwide. Influenza A virus is the most clinically important subtype of the influenza virus. It is the cause of the four pandemics that occurred in the 20th and the 21st century and still causes thousands of deaths worldwide annually. Understanding the life cycle of influenza virus is a prerequisite to competing it. Inhibiting the virus before infecting the host cell eliminates the need of drug delivery into cells and prevents the storm of cytokine expression accompanying the virus infection, which is believed to be the cause of severe consequences of influenza infection. Consequently, viral entry, the first step during infection, is our interest. This is a systematic review where 110 manuscripts were included. Google scholar was the search engine with keywords that included influenza A virus, influenza A virus receptors, influenza A, and host cells. The aim of this review is to give an overview of the multiplicity of factors and cofactors that orchestrate the process of viral entry and to mark its features.

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