Bird Flu - News and Views

U.K.: H5N1 found on a turkey farm

sharonstjoan — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 08:00:00 GMT

160,000 more turkeys will be killed

Bird flu has been confirmed in the U.K. on a Suffolk turkey farm where it has killed 2,600 turkeys. Tests have shown that it is the highly pathogenic Asian strain of the H5N1 virus.

Four strains of the H5N1 virus have been identified.

160,000 more turkeys are being slaughtered, as a preventive measure. The birds are being gassed in containers.

This is the first case of H5N1 on a commercial farm in the U.K. It is being assumed that the virus was passed on from a wild bird, possibly a small bird who entered the ventilation system.

Authorities are saying that there is no risk to humans and that no infected birds entered the food chain. H5N1 has killed 164 people worldwide since 2003.

According to the Infectious Diseases Society of America an estimated 220 million birds have either died of H5N1 or have been killed to prevent its spread, from 2003-2006.

To read the February 3 article in the BBC on-line, please go to:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/6327193.stm

US: Looking in wrong direction for bird flu signs?

sharonstjoan — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 08:00:00 GMT

Scientists Criticize Bird Flu Search

By LIBBY QUAID, AP Food and Farm Writer
Monday, December 4, 2006

Birds from Latin America - not from the north - are most likely to bring deadly bird flu to the main U.S., researchers said Monday, suggesting the government might miss the H5N1 virus because biologists have been looking in the wrong direction.

The United States' $29 million bird flu surveillance program has focused heavily on migratory birds flying from Asia to Alaska, where researchers this year collected tens of thousands of samples from wild birds nesting on frozen tundra before making their way south.

Those birds present a much lower risk than migratory birds that make their way north from South America through Central America and Mexico, where controls on imported poultry are not as tough as in the U.S. and Canada, according to findings in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Nations south of the U.S. import hundreds of thousands of chickens a year from countries where bird flu has turned up in migratory birds or poultry, said A. Marm Kilpatrick, lead author of the study.

"The risk is actually higher from the poultry trade to the Americas than from migratory birds," said Kilpatrick, of the Consortium for Conservation Medicine in New York. Other researchers on the study came from the Smithsonian Institution.

If bird flu arrives in Mexico or somewhere farther south, it could be a matter of time before a migratory bird carries the virus to the United States, Kilpatrick said.

"It's not just a matter of worrying about who you trade with, but it's a matter of thinking about who do your neighbors trade with, and who do your trading partners trade with," Kilpatrick said. "We need to be looking both south and north."

The study concluded that "current American surveillance plans that focus primarily on the Alaskan migratory bird pathway may fail to detect the introduction of H5N1 into the United States in time to prevent its spread into domestic poultry."

The report is the first to combine the DNA fingerprint of the H5N1 virus in different countries with data on the movement of migratory birds and commercial poultry in those countries.

The analysis helped to determine, for example, that the outbreak of bird flu in Turkey likely didn't come from poultry imports from Thailand, as previously thought. Instead, the probable source was migratory birds in Russia, where the virus had similar DNA to the virus in Turkey.

The study found that:

_ Bird flu was spread through Asia by the poultry trade.

_ Most of the spread throughout Europe was from migratory birds.

_ Bird flu spread into Africa from migratory birds as well as poultry trade.

U.S. officials cautioned that the study is not the final authority on the spread and prevention of bird flu.

"When you look at scientific literature, it's a big puzzle. This puts in a few more pieces," said David Swayne, director of the Agriculture Department's Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory in Athens, Ga.

Swayne cautioned that researchers looked only at countries' import restrictions through 2005.

"I'm not saying it's the fault of the study; the study is designed to look at what happened in the past," Swayne said. "We have to be very careful not to over-interpret. There is a limit on how recent the data is."

In addition, Agriculture Department officials said they are not focusing exclusively on Alaska.

More resources have been spent in Alaska than in other states so far, but testing is happening throughout the lower 48, and the U.S. is even helping Mexico do surveillance, said Tom DeLiberto, the department's National Wildlife Disease Coordinator.

"We have more information now than we did when we designed the surveillance effort last fall," DeLiberto said.

"We knew that we had limited information and couldn't design a system that looked at just Alaska," he said. "You have to build a robust system that could cover a lot of different potential pathways. We know as we get more information, we'll adapt our system."

Since the deadly H5N1 virus emerged in Hong Kong in 1996, at least 154 people have died and hundreds of millions of chickens, ducks, geese and turkeys have died or been killed to keep it from spreading.

So far, the virus has killed mostly people who had close contact with sick birds or their droppings, but scientists fear the virus could someday mutate into a form that spreads easily among people.

be prepared

four_paws — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:54:34 GMT

viruses like the H5N1 tells us that nowhere on this planet we are safe and that anything can happen anywhere, be it abroad or in our very own hometown.this situation had been making me really nervous since i live in a province and i have the feeling that the risks of the brid flu spread might be higher than in cities. i have been doing some researches on drugs against the birdflu virus and came up with these two options
http://www.drugdelivery.ca/s4632-s-TAMIFLU.aspx
and http://www.drugdelivery.ca/s45824-s-TAMIFLU.aspx and i am rather confused as to which one is the best way? i want to get second opinions on both. please help me out. thanks

RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: Fiday's Topic: Why cull (kill) so many birds?

four_paws — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:32:16 GMT

its very sad the way they are killing so many birds and even though not all of them is infected. these are nothing but precautionary measures, but still i ask myself is it worth it?

RE: RE: RE: RE: Fear of H5N1 -- Is the fear worse than the disease?

four_paws — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:29:00 GMT

i think that those who have any poultry business, breesding etc. are the ones more at risk and that their fear would be greater as all the outbreaks recently have been made in such places. i think their fear might get them paranioac and make them voluntarily discontinue or choose more drastic measures to eliminate their breedings even wihout reasons

RE: RE: How, when and where might we expect Bird flu to arrive in the US?

four_paws — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:23:11 GMT

what about the human to human transmission of the bird flu? is that possible, since we may never know who might be contaminated.

Indonesia: H5N1 still spreading

sharonstjoan — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 07:00:00 GMT

From The New York Times
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Published: July 21, 2006

Indonesia is about to surpass Vietnam as the country hardest hit by avian flu. And while Vietnam has not had a single human case or poultry outbreak this year, public health officials and experts say the situation in Indonesia is likely to get worse.

The flu is ubiquitous in thousands of backyard flocks, and it appears to be killing more birds every month, increasing the likelihood of human cases. Forty-two people have in Indonesia died since the first human case was confirmed a year ago.

“It’s like trying to fix the roof while there’s a storm going on,” said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization. “Until the animal situation gets under control, there’s going to be this steady drip, drip, drip of human cases, and that’s a problem.”

Although the A(H5N1) flu arrived relatively late in Indonesia, it soon spiraled out of control, and deaths have mounted quickly.

Unlike Thailand, which quenched outbreaks by killing millions of chickens, or Vietnam, which used mandatory vaccination, Indonesia has tried a mix of limited culling and vaccinating in rings around the cull — so far, with little success.

Mathur Riady, chief of livestock for Indonesia’s Health Ministry, said recently that more than a million birds had died of the flu between January and March, about the same number as died all last year.

The biggest obstacle to beating the disease, international flu experts say, is the country’s decentralized government. Health officials in the capital, Jakarta, have been described as having powers extending no further than their office walls, while real power resides with the governors of the 33 provinces and the elected bupatis, or regents, of 480 districts.

“It’s a real mishmash,” said Dr. Jeffrey C. Mariner, a veterinary medicine professor at Tufts University who is helping the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization train new veterinary workers. “You have to sit down with each decision-making unit and get them all on board. It’s hard to mount a coordinated response.”

As a result, the country is not only slow to report human cases, it no longer even reports poultry outbreaks to the World Organization for Animal Health in Paris.

Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/21/world/asia/21flu.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fNews%2fHealth%2fDiseases%2c%20Conditions%2c%20and%20Health%20Topics%2fAvian%20Influenza&oref=slogin

Spain suffers first bird flu case

sharonstjoan — Sat, 08 Jul 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Spain has confirmed its first case of the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu.

The virus was detected in a great crested grebe that was found dead in the northern province of Alava, the agriculture ministry said.

The Spanish authorities said there was no reason for alarm, and that the case should not affect poultry consumption.

H5N1 has spread to birds in many European countries. The virus has killed more than 130 people since 2003 - mostly in East Asia.

'No reason for alarm'

Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said the case was "strictly veterinary" and would not affect people.

A key migratory route from Africa passes through Spain

"I would like to make clear to citizens that there is no reason for alarm or for changing habits in our daily life," she said.

A sample from the bird, found in a marshes in Salburua lake near the city of Vitoria, was sent to a laboratory on Thursday.

Full article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5158162.stm Alava

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5158162.stm

Asia not the source of Nigerian outbreak of bird flu

sharonstjoan — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Paris (ANTARA News) - Genetic analysis of the H5N1 avian influenza that has erupted in Nigeria shows the virus hit the country in waves but none originated from Southeast Asia, the seat of the bird flu crisis.

H5N1 was first detected among poultry in northern Nigeria on February 7, prompting the authorities to slap a ban on the internal mouvement of poultry.

These measures were criticised as ineffective in many quarters, as the
virus subsequently popped up in the southwest of the country, AFP reported.

Full article:
http://www.antara.co.id/en/seenws/?id=15742

Copyright © 2006 ANTARA

France: The First International Conference on Avian Influenza in Humans is told vaccine may be ten years away

sharonstjoan — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Bird flu vaccine '10 years away'

By Matt McGrath
Science reporter, BBC News

Avian flu experts meeting in Paris have been told that a viable vaccine against the human form of the disease could take 10 years to develop.

Dr David Fedson, a retired professor of medicine, told the conference that there were well-documented problems with the H5N1 virus when it came to making a vaccine.

Scientists normally grow such a vaccine from an inert form of a virus, using chicken eggs as their favourite growing medium.

According to Dr Fedson, who also worked for a number of years in the vaccine manufacturing industry, the vaccine produced from H5N1 was proving particularly difficult to grow up.

It was also proving ineffective at stimulating an immune response that would give a person a good defence against bird flu.

He told BBC News: "Right now, worldwide, we can produce 300 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine, but it turns out that the H5N1 vaccine is so poorly immunogenic and replicates so poorly that... we could immunise globally, with six months of production, about 100 million people.

"From a public health point of view this is catastrophic," the former professor of medicine at the University of Virginia School of Medicine, US, said.

"We have had reverse genetics H5N1 viruses available to work with for three years and after three years this is all we can say: 'We could produce enough vaccine worldwide, for 100 million people'. Is that good enough? I don't think so."

Leadership 'needed'

Dr Fedson's views were echoed by Professor Albert Osterhaus, a leading European virologist based at the Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam.

He was involved in decoding the virus behind the Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic.

He told the meeting that a global influenza task force was needed to get to grips with the situation.

Full article:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5132910.stm

Does your company have disaster plans for H5N1?

sharonstjoan — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

When bird flu hits
Many companies have not made plans for dealing with a pandemic, but keeping workers healthy and businesses running will take preparation.
Monday, June 26, 2006

Janet H. Cho
Plain Dealer Reporter

Westfield Insurance has about 100 employees who brainstorm all the disasters that could befall their company, then draw up a plan to address each scenario. Of those, about 15 employees focus specifically on the threat of a worldwide outbreak of avian flu.

What is your company doing?

If you're like most businesses, you've heard of bird flu but haven't given it much thought.

A Deloitte & Touche survey of more than 100 executives in January found that two-thirds had done virtually nothing to prepare for a pandemic. Most companies didn't even have a coordinator.

Big mistake, say business continuity experts.

Most health experts believe that a global flu outbreak of some kind is virtually certain to occur again at some point. The deadly "Spanish flu" of 1918-19 killed more than 50 million people and was the most devastating infectious disease ever recorded.

"It is only a matter of time before an avian flu virus -- most likely [a strain called] H5N1 -- acquires the ability to be transmitted from human to human, sparking the outbreak of human pandemic influenza," Dr. Lee Jong-wook, the now-deceased director general of the U.N. World Health Organization, told a WHO meeting on avian flu and human flu pandemic in November.

"We don't know when this will happen. But we do know that it will happen."

Not only would many companies be paralyzed by such an illness -- experts warn that up to 40 percent of your work force could be out of commission for weeks at a time -- but businesses would also play a key role in how the virus travels around the world.

"Employers will be on the front line of any outbreak, since business travel and workplaces are major factors in the spread of any virus," said John A. Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a global outplacement firm.

Full article:
http://www.cleveland.com/business/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/business/1151224450315680.xml&coll=2

More on WHO's statement about H5N1 mutation

sharonstjoan — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

H5N1 Has Mutated Slightly, But Pandemic Threat Is No Greater

Researchers from the World Health Organization (WHO) say that the H5N1 bird flu virus strain has mutated a bit after samples from a family cluster in Sumatra, Indonesia, were studied. However, WHO stresses that the mutation has not increased the chances of a human pandemic threat at all.

Seven members of the same family became infected with bird flu last month. An eighth person, also a member of that family, died. However, she was buried before samples could be taken. It is therefore presumed that it was most likely a cluster of eight. WHO scientists say that samples taken from a 10-year-old boy indicate that the virus mutated slightly and that the boy infected his father.

WHO scientists said the H5N1 in that cluster did not infect anyone else. In other words, it not spread. This is the first time compelling evidence has been found of H5N1 transmitting from one human to another.

WHO added that viruses are always changing slightly. This current slight mutation is nothing to be alarmed about. The virus can mutate in many different ways, one of which could be in the direction that may become a threat to human public health - this has not happened in this case. The fact that H5N1 died within that cluster means the mutated virus probably died there as well.

Detecting this mutation shows how advanced our surveillance system is becoming.

The H5N1 bird flu virus strain has always had the potential of transmitting from human to human - albeit with great difficulty. For one human to infect another ‘continuous close physical contact' is needed. The family cluster lived together in a very small room. If some of the members were infected and they slept together, the likelihood of human-to-human transmission would have been much greater.

Scientists were intrigued that only ‘blood-relatives' were infected. This means that if a boy and his father got infected, the father's wife and her blood relatives didn't.
Investigators still have not been able to find the source of the infection for the cluster - an animal source. They have combed the area and come up with nothing. It is probable that wherever there had been an infected bird had been thoroughly cleaned before the inspectors arrived.

Good surveillance is essential if we want to combat the spread of bird flu. The H5N1 virus needs an environment where lots of humans are getting infected for it to mutate. The most likely way the bird flu virus could pick up the ability to become human transmissible is to infect a person who is sick with the normal human flu virus. H5N1 could exchange genetic information with the human flu virus and acquire its ability to easily spread from human-to-human.

Humans cannot get ill easily because H5N1 needs to get deep down in the human lung to cause illness. It does not infect the upper-respiratory tract. This, for us has two bonuses:

1. We cannot catch it easily as it is difficult for it to get deep down into the lung(s).
2. A sick human cannot pass it on easily as his coughs and sneezes contain hardly any H5N1s, for the same reason - they are too deep down.

For the virus to become easily human transmissible it will most likely need to infect the upper respiratory tract. It will need to mutate to do this. Then infections would be easier to get and sick people would cough and sneeze larger quantities of the virus. Even so, on a good note, upper-respiratory tract infections are much easier to treat than ones deep down in the lungs. Therefore, if the virus mutates it will spread among humans more easily, but should not be so deadly. This is only a well calculated theory. Nature sometimes follows different paths.

Written by: Christian Nordqvist

Editor: Medical News Today

WHO says bird flu virus mutated

sharonstjoan — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

WHO Says Bird Flu Virus Mutated

By Margie Mason

A World Health Organization investigation showed that the H5N1 virus mutated slightly in an Indonesian family cluster on Sumatra island, but bird flu experts insisted Friday it did not increase the possibility of a human pandemic.

The virus that infected eight members of a family last month - killing seven of them - appears to have slightly mutated in a 10-year-old boy, who is then suspected of passing the virus to his father, the WHO investigative report said.

It is the first evidence indicating that a person caught the virus from a human and then passed it on to another person, said Tim Uyeki, an epidemiologist from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He said the H5N1 virus died with the father and did not pass outside the family.

“It stopped. It was dead end at that point,” he said, stressing that viruses are always slightly changing and there was no reason to raise alarm.

Dr. William Schaffner, a bird flu expert at the Vanderbilt University, called the mutation “noteworthy but not worrisome.” Generally it takes a series of mutations in a bird flu virus to raise the danger of a pandemic in humans, he said in a telephone interview.

Schaffner said it is remarkable that scientists were able to discover a mutation that occurred in a remote village in Indonesia. That’s the result of intense surveillance linked with “21st-century laboratory virology,” he said. “That’s awesome.”

The findings appeared in a report obtained by The Associated Press that was distributed at a closed meeting in Jakarta attended by some of the world’s top bird flu experts.

The three-day session that wrapped up Friday was convened after Indonesia asked for international help. The country has experienced an explosion of human bird flu cases this year and is on pace to become the world’s hardest-hit nation with 39 deaths.

The government said it needed $900 million over the next three years to fight the virus, which is ravaging poultry stocks across the archipelago. Health experts urged full implementation and funding of its national bird flu plan.

Full article:
http://bird-flu-symptom.info/

Chinese SARS-Bird flu report puzzles WHO

sharonstjoan — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Chinese scientists Wednesday said that a man initially thought to have SARS actually died of bird flu in 2003 -- two years before the country reported any human bird-flu infections to the World Health Organization. But the scientists now want to withdraw their report to a leading medical journal.

WHO was surprised by the report, which came from eight scientists and not the Chinese government. The findings were printed Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. At the last minute, however, at least one of the Chinese scientists e-mailed the journal Wednesday morning, requesting that the report be withdrawn. Journal editors were waiting to see whether the authors would now retract the paper, according to the Associated Press.

The confusion surrounding the man's death in Beijing raises the possibility that other cases in China already attributed to SARS may have actually been the deadly H5N1 flu. "It's hard to believe that this is the only person in all of China who developed H5N1" that year, Dr. John Treanor, a flu expert at the University of Rochester, told the news service.

A WHO spokesman in China said the agency would formally request that the Chinese Ministry of Health clarify the report and explain why it took more than two years to uncover the finding. Attempts to reach the Chinese scientists for comment were unsuccessful, the AP reported.

China didn't report its first human cases of bird flu outside Hong Kong until 2005. Eight infections and five deaths were recorded that year, and this year the government has reported at least 10 infections and seven deaths. The SARS outbreak in China began in November 2002, but was not recognized until the following spring. More than 1,450 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome were confirmed, the vast majority in Asia. Many cases were diagnosed based on symptoms, which are similar to those of bird flu, and not lab tests.

During the SARS outbreak, some public-health experts questioned whether the Chinese government was being candid about the extent of the crisis.

The New England Journal of Medicine report raised the possibility that the two dangerous viruses emerged simultaneously. The newly disclosed case in Beijing means "there may be more jumps from birds to people than we realized," a journal editor told AP.

Meanwhile, WHO experts said that human-to-human transmission likely occurred among seven of eight relatives who developed bird flu and died last month in Indonesia, according to a report obtained Wednesday by AP.

The experts said the cluster's index case was probably infected by sick birds and spread the disease to six family members. One of those cases, a boy, then likely infected his father.

The report was distributed during a closed meeting at a three-day conference in Jakarta, convened after Indonesia asked for international help. Indonesia has confirmed 51 cases of bird flu this year, and 39 have been fatal, according to AP.

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Canada finds no high-risk bird flu in suspect flock

sharonstjoan — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Source: Reuters

By David Ljunggren and Marcy Nicholson

OTTAWA/WINNIPEG, June 20 (Reuters) - A backyard flock of geese, ducks and chickens in Eastern Canada was not infected with the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu strain, officials said on Tuesday, dismissing fears that the strain might have arrived in North America for the first time.

The fears had been aroused after a gosling in the small flock in Prince Edward Island died, and a lab in Eastern Canada examined it and found evidence of H5 avian flu.

But the officials said on Tuesday that Canada's national laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, had not been able to reproduce the virus found by the Eastern lab.

The officials told a conference call announcing their test results that there was no risk to people, to other animals, or to the environment.

"It may have been H5N1 but it wouldn't have been the H5N1 that we have concerns about, in other words the Asian strain," said Dr. Jim Clark, veterinarian for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu virus only occasionally infects people, but when it does, the fatality rate is high. It has killed 130 people in nine countries, and is also marked by a high mortality rate in birds.

Clark said the highly pathogenic virus has a relatively long life span, and would have survived the journey to the Winnipeg lab.

He said the bird probably had a low pathogen virus, but its cause of death remains a "matter of conjecture".

Full article:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N20141264.htm

Canada bird flu not seen as high-pathogen - CFIA

sharonstjoan — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

Source: Reuters

WINNIPEG, Manitoba, June 16 (Reuters) - The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said on Friday there is no current evidence that a detected case of H5 avian flu is the high-pathogen strain that has been found in Asia and other countries.

Full article:
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16237483.htm

Canada: H5 avian virus found in dead goose in Prince Edward Island Province; not yet clear whether virus is H5N1

sharonstjoan — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

H5 avian virus found in dead goose in Canada

A domestic goose that died in Canada 's western Prince Edward Island province earlier this week tested positive for an H5 avian flu virus, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) confirmed Friday.

The preliminary test result, made by the Atlantic Veterinary College in provincial capital Charlottetown, showed the goose had an H5 virus. But it is not yet clear whether the virus was the cause of death, Dr. Jim Clark, director of animal health for the CFIA, said in Ottawa.

Source: Xinhua

Full story:
http://english.people.com.cn/200606/17/eng20060617_274918.html

HongKong scientists find new evidence of cytokine storm in avian flu cases

sharonstjoan — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 07:00:00 GMT

New evidence of cytokine storm in avian flu cases

Jun 14, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – Scientists in Hong Kong have reported new experimental evidence that avian influenza infections in human cells are more likely to trigger a destructive immune-system overreaction, or "cytokine storm," than human flu viruses are.

Writing in the July 1 Journal of Infectious Diseases, the researchers report that two avian flu viruses, a 1997 strain of H5N1 and a 1997 H9N2 strain, caused immune system cells in lab cultures to produce much greater levels of certain chemokines (a class of cytokine, or messenger protein) than such cells did when infected with an ordinary human flu virus.

"In general, the chemokines and chemokine-receptor responses of MDMs [monocyte-derived macrophages, a type of immune cell] to avian influenza viruses were much stronger than those to human virus, which may account for the high pathogenicity of avian viruses," the report states.

In addition, the H5N1 strain caused immune cells from adults to produce higher levels of certain cytokines than similar cells from newborn babies did. The authors say that finding may help explain why Hong Kong's human H5N1 outbreak in 1997 killed 5 of 9 infected adults (older than 12) but only 1 of 9 infected children. That sharp difference in adult and child mortality rates has not been seen in the current wave of H5N1 cases dating to late 2003.

Scientists have suggested that the cytokine storm played a role in the high death rate in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic and is playing a similar role in human cases of H5N1 infection today. Autopsies of H5N1 avian flu victims in Vietnam and elsewhere have revealed lungs choked with debris from excessive inflammation triggered by the virus. Similar severe lung damage was frequently reported in victims of the 1918 pandemic, which disproportionately killed people with the strongest immune systems—young, healthy adults.

The new study was conducted by a University of Hong Kong team that has previously reported experimental evidence of a cytokine storm in H5N1 avian flu. The team includes J. S. Malik Peiris and, as first author, Jianfang Zhou.

In view of the severe lung damage caused by H5N1 in humans, the team decided to measure the expression of four chemokines and two chemokine receptors induced in MDM cells by avian and human flu viruses. They also sought to compare the chemokine production induced by these viruses in adult-derived MDMs and in neonatal MDMs derived from umbilical cord blood.

Three viruses were used: a strain from the 1997 human outbreak in Hong Kong, a 1997 strain of H9N2 from quail, and a 1998 strain of H1N1 human flu from Hong Kong. The H9N2 virus is a precursor of the H5N1 virus, with which it shares six internal proteins, the report says. Because of the safety risks involved in working with H5N1 viruses, the team first did the experiment with the H9N2 virus and then repeated it with the H5N1 virus in a biosafety level 3 facility.

See also:

Nov 16, 2005, CIDRAP News story "Lab study supports idea of 'cytokine storm' in H5N1 flu"

Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy
Academic Health Center -- University of Minnesota
Copyright © 2006 Regents of the University of Minnesota

Full story:
http://www.birdflubreakingnews.com/templates/birdflu/window.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cidrap.umn.edu%2Fcidrap%2Fcontent%2Finfluenza%2Favianflu%2Fnews%2Fjun1406cytokine.html

Avian Flu Prevention - Utah.pdf

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:16:00 GMT

UT Avian Influe…sponse Plan.pdf

Anonymous — Wed, 14 Jun 2006 01:14:31 GMT