Influenza: A case study
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Learn about the biology of influenza in this free course. Explore topics such as virus structure, immune responses, and virus evolution. Gain a comprehensive understanding of influenza and its impact on the host.
This free course, Influenza: A case study, explores the biology of influenza, covering a range of topics including: the virus, infection, replication, mutation, immune responses, pathology, surveillance, diagnosis and treatment.
Course learning outcomes
After studying this course, you should be able to:
Define and use, or recognise definitions and applications of, each of the glossary terms in the course
Describe influenza viruses, their structure, how they are transmitted, how they infect cells and replicate and how they produce their damage in the host
Outline the different types of immune defence which are deployed against flu infections, distinguishing those that act against infected cells from those that act against free virus
Describe how strains of the virus change over time, and relate this to the flu viruses that occur in birds and other mammals
Explain how the epidemic pattern of influenza can be related to the evolution of new strains of virus and to the specificity of the immune response against each strain.
