According to a recent study, during the last three decades, there has been a vast change in the swine flu virus and this can be easily noticed; at least, during its transportation in live pigs.

In Hong Kong, an analysis was done on the swine flu viruses by a collaboration of researchers from Duke University and the National University of Singapore. During the study, it has been established that pigs when transported from one region to another, are prone of inhaling the cocktail of genetic material of the viruses along with local viruses. This way a new combination is created and thus, the diversity of swine flu gets increased.

According to Vijaykrishna Dhanasekaran, an assistant professor specializing in virus evolution at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore, with the help of this study’s results, claimed that important clues into the general mechanism of influenza virus evolution can be gathered. However, when more and more people tend to come into contact with viruses, then the number of such viruses is called mutations. But in reality, the actual risk of mutation to humans is still unclear.

In this regard, Dhanasekaran said, "I think the risk of swine-to-human transmission has not increased greatly, but the diversity of swine viruses has increased, as shown in our study".