Reacción a "Avian influenza viruses can resist fever"

The article analyses how certain variants of the avian influenza virus respond to heat, and demonstrates in a robust and well-designed manner that some changes in the virus can confer greater resistance to high temperatures. The study, which is easy to follow despite its technical complexity, has its own limitations: the authors point out that only one of the possible configurations that could influence the virus's sensitivity to temperature has been evaluated, that experimentally induced fever does not completely reproduce the natural immune response, and that it is not possible to know exactly the actual temperature at which the virus replicates in animals with simulated fever.

Even so, the work provides relevant information on the role of fever in the evolution and control of respiratory infections and offers clues that could help to better understand phenomena such as the observed loss of seasonality of this virus, as it is stable in higher temperature contexts.

Although the results come from cell cultures and mouse models, and therefore cannot be directly extrapolated to other species, including humans, the study opens up a promising avenue by identifying the importance of the role of virus proteins other than those targeted by antibodies, which could influence the development of the infection. It is, in short, a solid first step towards future research.