Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Clade 2.3.2.1a virus infection in domestic cats, India, 2025

2025 · doi:10.1101/2025.02.23.638954
preprint OA: closed CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0
📄 Open PDF Full text JSON View at publisher
⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-07, 2026-07-17 ⓘ

Highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 clade 2.3.2.1a was detected in Indian domestic cats, with sequencing revealing triple reassortant viruses possessing mutations for enhanced polymerase activity and α2–6 sialic acid receptor affinity.

One-sentence paraphrase of the abstract; not a substitute for reading it. No clinical advice. How this works

Abstract

In January 2025, the highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus clade 2.3.2.1a infection was detected in domestic cats and whole-genome sequencing of two cat H5N1 isolates was performed using the Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing platform. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the circulation of triple reassortant viruses in cats. Although cat viruses lacked classic mammalian adaptation markers they carried mutations associated with enhanced polymerase activity in mammalian cells and increased affinity for α2–6 sialic acid receptor suggesting their potential role in facilitating infection in cats. The identification of reassortant HPAI H5N1 clade 2.3.2.1a viruses in domestic cats in India highlights the urgent need for enhanced surveillance in domestic poultry, wild birds, and mammals, including humans, to track genomic diversity and molecular evolution of circulating strains.
Full text 974 characters · extracted from oa-doi-fallback · click to expand
Abstract In January 2025, the highly pathogenic avian influenza A(H5N1) virus clade 2.3.2.1a infection was detected in domestic cats and whole-genome sequencing of two cat H5N1 isolates was performed using the Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing platform. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the circulation of triple reassortant viruses in cats. Although cat viruses lacked classic mammalian adaptation markers they carried mutations associated with enhanced polymerase activity in mammalian cells and increased affinity for α2–6 sialic acid receptor suggesting their potential role in facilitating infection in cats. The identification of reassortant HPAI H5N1 clade 2.3.2.1a viruses in domestic cats in India highlights the urgent need for enhanced surveillance in domestic poultry, wild birds, and mammals, including humans, to track genomic diversity and molecular evolution of circulating strains. Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.

Text is read by the "Ask this paper" AI Q&A widget below. Extraction quality varies by source — PMC NXML preserves structure cleanly, OA-HTML may include some navigation residue, and OA-PDF can have broken hyphenation. The publisher copy (via DOI) is the canonical version.

My notes (saved in your browser only)

⚙ Ask this paper AI returns verbatim quotes from the full text · source: oa-doi-fallback ⓘ

Answers must be backed by verbatim quotes from this paper's full text. Hallucinated quotes are dropped automatically; if no verbatim passage answers the question, we say so. How this works

Citation neighborhood (no data yet)

We don't have any in-corpus citations linked to this paper yet. This is a recent paper (2025) — citers typically take a year or two to land, and the OpenAlex reference graph may still be filling in.

Source provenance

europepmc
last seen: 2026-05-20T01:45:00.602351+00:00
unpaywall
last seen: 2026-05-26T02:00:01.498150+00:00
License: CC-BY-NC-ND-4.0