The cold and flu season has officially begun , as many of us—myself included—know all too well. If the sniffles have you down and you’re looking for a place to direct your frustrations, a new study published in the Journal of General Virology suggests that much of the blame can be placed on birds:
“We investigated the evolutionary history of metapneumoviruses using genetic information available for numerous strains of HMPV and AMPV-C circulating in humans and birds,” said Professor Dr Fouchier. “We calculated that the moment of divergence between HMPV and AMPV-C occurred approximately 200 years ago. Therefore, HMPV probably originates from an AMPV-C like virus that crossed the species barrier to infect humans around that time.”
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