Bat influenza
Viral disease afflicting bats
Bat influenza is a type of influenza A viruses found in bats. Bats were not considered to host Influenza A viruses until 2012–2013, when two phylogenetically distinct lineages, designated Influenza A virus subtype H17N10 and H18N11, were identified in Central and South American bats.
Discovery
The species of bats known to carry bat influenza are common in Central and South America. The first bat flu virus, IAV H17N10, was first discovered in 2009 in little yellow-shouldered bats (Sturnira lilium) in Guatemala. In 2012 a novel influenza virus (H18N11) was discovered in bats in South America. This strain was found to be divergent from the better-understood Influenza A viruses most commonly found in fowls and humans. The complete sequence of IAV H17N10 was extracted from little yellow-shouldered bats in 2012. In 2013, the sequence of IAV H18N11 was extracted from flat-faced fruit-eating bats (Artibeus planirostris) from Peru. In contrast to human and avian influenza A viruses that use sialic acid receptors, the bat flu strains H17N10 and H18N11 infect cells by using major histocompatibility complex class II molecules on the host cell surface. Consequently, it was demonstrated that these viruses primarily infect immune cells, such as macrophages and dendritic cells, that express high levels of MHC-II.
Other species
Influenza A viruses circulate among a wide variety of species, being able to cross species barriers and establish new virus lineages in birds and mammals.
“Bat influenza” enters the record as viral disease afflicting bats. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what influenza, Viral and disease can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Bat influenza” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, influenza, Viral and disease provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q97354336. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2013 and 2009.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bat influenza” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.