SUMMARY
In the last years, the world has been facing pandemic influenza which caused by influenza A virus. In this study detection of influenza A virus infection in Iraqi patients was done by r RT-PCR. Three hundred eighty (380) clinical respiratory secretions samples that were collected between December and April 2013, from different hospitals and they were sent to Central Public Health Laboratory (CPHL)/National Influenza center/ Baghdad /Iraq. Among these samples, only 35 samples (22 Males and 13 females all of them were adults) gave positive results (both TS (throat swabs) and NPS (nasopharyngeal swab)) for influenza A virus (9.2%). Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and IL-1 a are pleiotropic cytokines implicated in the pathogenesis of local inflammation during viral upper respiratory infections. Cytokines levels in both NPS and TS were determined. The result appeared that there was a significant difference between IL-6 and IL-1a, but there was no significant difference between IL-6 and IL-1 a in Ts and NSP. For the first time we try to detect C-reactive protein (CRP) in nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) and throat swabs (TS) and compared with serum, also to prove that this protein may be secreted in fluids other than serum. The result showed that 64.3% of both NPS and TS were positive for CRP. This may be due to that CRP in response to microbial infection, tissue injury, and immunomodulatory stimuli are synthesized and released by various cells.