Asia not the source of Nigerian Bird flu

[Texanna]

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

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.


Virologists at the Institute of Immunology in Luxembourg carried out a DNA fingerprinting of viruses found in faecal swabs taken from chickens on two farms, one in Lagos state and the other in the far southwest.


They found that the virus probably entered the country several times,
rather than breached internal cordons.

The strains are cousins of H5N1 viruses found in southern Russia and in
northern Europe but are not of the same lineage as the virus that has rampaged through poultry flocks in Southeast Asia.

The report's authors, led by Claude Muller, say they cannot confirm the source of the Nigerian infection. It could be wild birds or unprotected poultry
trade.

Either way, 15 of Nigeria's 36 states are now infected, "and it is difficult to see how the virus might still be contained without (culling) measures, combined with surveillance and large-scale vaccination," says the paper, which appears on Thursday in Nature, the British science weekly.

 

[HenryN]

Re: Asia not the source of Nigerian Bird flu

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

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.


Virologists at the Institute of Immunology in Luxembourg carried out a DNA fingerprinting of viruses found in faecal swabs taken from chickens on two farms, one in Lagos state and the other in the far southwest.


They found that the virus probably entered the country several times,
rather than breached internal cordons.

The strains are cousins of H5N1 viruses found in southern Russia and in
northern Europe but are not of the same lineage as the virus that has rampaged through poultry flocks in Southeast Asia.

The report's authors, led by Claude Muller, say they cannot confirm the source of the Nigerian infection. It could be wild birds or unprotected poultry
trade.

Either way, 15 of Nigeria's 36 states are now infected, "and it is difficult to see how the virus might still be contained without (culling) measures, combined with surveillance and large-scale vaccination," says the paper, which appears on Thursday in Nature, the British science weekly.

The sequences are Qinghai isolates and are from wild birds. They are distinct Qinghai isolates, indicating they are NOT from trade, but from independent introductions of the Qinghai strain which links back to Qinghai Lake in China (followed by southern Siberia and Mongolia).

 

[Snowy Owl]

Re: Asia not the source of Nigerian Bird flu

All thanks to Lyro

GRIPPE AVIAIRE: LE VIRUS H5N1 A PÉNÉTRÉ AU NIGERIA
PAR DE MULTIPLES PORTES
5 juillet 2006 (Xinhua)

AVIARY INFLUENZA: VIRUS H5N1 A PENETRATED IN NIGERIA BY MULTIPLE DOORS

July 5, 2006 (Xinhua)

Paris -- the aviary flu virus in its form highly pathogenic H5N1 penetrated in Nigeria by multiple doors, according to a study to appear Thursday in Nature, a British scientific magazine.

The test on the samples of 18 infected chickens, coming from two firm of the State of Lagos in Nigeria, separated from around fifty of kilometers, highlighted the existence of three distinct strain of the virus.

The team of Claude Muller, of the national Laboratory of public health of Luxembourg, found there similar stocks with those detected in Occidental Asia, Europe and Egypt.

Nigeria is the first African country to announce a case of aviary influenza on February 7, 2006, in the State de Kaduna. In spite of the installation of a medical cord to contain it in the north of the country, the virus quickly extended to the State from Lagos. Currently, 14 of the 31 States of the country were touched by the virus. "Our results show that the virus in the south-west of the country was not introduced by north, but that it arrived in an independent way", according to the study published in the British scientific magazine.

"It is thus difficult to consider that the virus can be contained, without the measurements of demolition, accompanied by measurements of monitoring and a vaccination on broad scale", declared Rr Muller.

However, the article also stresses the importance of the poultry breeding in Nigeria, since it acts of the second industry of the country after oil.

Source: http://www.french.xinhuanet.com/fren...ent_278999.htm

 

[HenryN]

Re: Asia not the source of Nigerian Bird flu

Accession numbers of sequences in the phylogenetic tree (Fig. 1).<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/10.06/BA209(H5N1), AM262541
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/10.06/BA210(H5N1), AM262542
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/10.06/BA211(H5N1), AM262543
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/8.06/SO300(H5N1), AM262546
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/8.06/SO452(H5N1), AM262547
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/8.06/SO493(H5N1), AM262553
A/chicken/Lagos.NIE/8.06/SO494(H5N1), AM262572

 

[Sharpe]

Re: Asia not the source of Nigerian Bird flu

Have you guys seen this Associated Press article on the Nature paper? It's getting very wide distribution.

http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/health/news-article.aspx?storyid=60516
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists say they've found surprising evidence from Nigeria, the first African nation to report a dangerous form of bird flu, that the virus entered the country at least three times.

One expert said that suggests that the H5N1 virus spreads more efficiently than researchers had thought.

The new findings in a paper in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature do not reveal whether the virus was delivered to Nigeria by migratory birds or by imported or smuggled birds.

"We think the most likely explanation is that it came by migratory birds, but we can't exclude the other possibilities," said Albert Osterhaus of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, an author of the paper.

The paper says Nigeria has many bird sanctuaries along two migratory flight paths that connect with southern Russia, Europe and western Asia. It's not clear which species of migratory birds might have been involved in possibly transporting the virus, Osterhaus said.

Nigeria first reported H5N1 bird flu in February, at a large commercial farm that raised chickens, geese and ostriches. The virus has since shown up in birds at other locations around the country.

The virus can jump to humans, and scientists worry that it may mutate into a form that spreads easily and rapidly among people, setting off a deadly flu pandemic. However, the vast majority of the more than 200 human cases globally so far have come from exposure to infected birds.

For the Nature study, researchers compared the genetic makeup of H5N1 virus samples from northern Nigeria and from two farms in southwest Nigeria.

They found distinct strains that differed so much from each other that they probably did not all arise within Nigeria, Osterhaus said. Instead, the diversity suggests that three different strains entered Nigeria independently, though it's impossible to tell where they came from, he said.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a virologist from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo who didn't take part in the study, said the researchers make a good case for three different introductions of the virus. That's a surprise, because ordinarily one would expect the virus to enter just once and then diversify within a country, he said.

"Obviously the virus is spreading more efficiently than we thought," Kawaoka said. "Maybe similar things could happen in other countries."