What does H1N1 'SOIV' mean?

Answer 1

SOIV = Swine Origin Influenza Virus (or as some say: Swine Originated Influenza Virus.

This acronym was first used in the April 29, 2009 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), by researchers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to mean "swine-origin influenza A (H1N1) virus,". They also used "S-OIV" for short. The same name also appeared in a paper May 7, 2009 in The New England Journal of Medicine. But, on the day before that, in the May 6, 2009 issue of MMWR, the CDC had already coined the different name "novel influenza A (H1N1) virus".

SOIV is also what some public health organizations in Canada began to use to refer to A-H1N1/09, the Pandemic Swine Flu. The nomenclature of flu viruses is not standardized, and because of the negative repercussions that pigs (with slaughter in some countries) and Mexico's tourist industry have felt by having their names so closely associated with the virus, it has been an ever changing evolution of names during the early parts of the pandemic.

The A-H1N1/09 Virus still has different names in other countries as well, for example: it is called Schweinegrippe in Germany, la Grippe A in France, Mexican Flu in the Netherlands, SOIV (Swine Origin Influenza Virus) in Canada, and la Epidemia in Mexico.

The H1N1 refers to the Hemagglutinin type (H1) and Neuraminidase type (N1) there are about 14 H types and 9 N types, and Influenza can have any combination of those. The H and N are proteins that are on the outer virus coat, called a capsid. They have specific functions for allowing the virus to invade host cells and the "offspring" to be released by the cells once produced. Our immune systems create antibodies that search for foreign invaders and they can use these proteins to identify the virus and create cells able to destroy it. These surface proteins are also mutated by some viruses to make them unidentifiable by the antibodies, and that is what can create a new strain of influenza.