Bird flu still world's most lethal threat

[Shannon Bennett]

Please remember this is a reporter not a health official that is responsible for the inflammatory title.

http://www.halifaxcourier.co.uk/mailbag/Bird-flu-still-worlds-most.3599207.jp

Bird flu still world's most lethal threat










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IF everyone thought the mutated human killer variant of bird flu had died a death over the last few months, you would have been totally wrong. All the following were recorded this month:

China ? a father and son were diagnosed with the virus. 60 per cent of all infected have died.

Pakistan ? for the first time in the history of Pakistan, bird flu was confirmed after two brothers died.

Indonesia ? a man from an area west of Jakarta died from bird flu.

Poland ? a fresh outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus bird flu was discovery at two poultry farms.

Benin ? the west African country recorded its first suspected cases of bird flu.

Russia ? an outbreak of bird flu on a farm in southern Russia.

Saudi Arabia ? the bird flu scare has gripped Saudi Arabia and forced the government to cull almost 4.5 million birds.

But the most disturbing news this week is that scientists have created the human killer virus in the lab. The dreaded H5N1 avian flu, as feared, finally mutated last August into a virulent form that can easily spread from person to person, increasing the likelihood of a pandemic that could kill hundreds of millions ? much like 1918s infamous Spanish flu.

Luckily, this mutation was the creation of scientists at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the mutated strain lives ? for now ? only
in petri dishes.

But it shows this is clearly on the horizon, for if it can be created in the lab, it is only a matter of time before it can replicate itself in the world at large.

As Greg Poland, of the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, said, there has been a 28-fold increase in the number of times the deadly strain has jumped to humans, killing 60 percent of the people it has infected. Compare that with the Spanish flu, which wiped out only 2 to 20 per cent of its hosts but resulted in about 100 million deaths worldwide.

The only hope we have of stopping what could be the most devastating pandemic ever, is to adopt the strategy put forward by Professor Kennedy Short-ridge, the man who first identified that the virus had jumped to humans in 1997. Govern-ments have to back this strategy before it is too late.

Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Switzerland


The full article contains 399 words and appears in Evening Courier newspaper.
Last Updated: 18 December 2007 10:01 AM

 

[cartski]

Re: Bird flu still world's most lethal threat

But the most disturbing news this week is that scientists have created the human killer virus in the lab. The dreaded H5N1 avian flu, as feared, finally mutated last August into a virulent form that can easily spread from person to person, increasing the likelihood of a pandemic that could kill hundreds of millions ? much like 1918s infamous Spanish flu.

Luckily, this mutation was the creation of scientists at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the mutated strain lives ? for now ? only in petri dishes.

But it shows this is clearly on the horizon, for if it can be created in the lab, it is only a matter of time before it can replicate itself in the world at large.


......


The only hope we have of stopping what could be the most devastating pandemic ever, is to adopt the strategy put forward by Professor Kennedy Short-ridge, the man who first identified that the virus had jumped to humans in 1997. Govern-ments have to back this strategy before it is too late.

Are these statements about the NIH study accurate? There were a lot of caveats, I seem to recall, about the variant produced becoming the pandemic strain.

What is Kennedy Shortridge's strategy?

J.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Bird flu still world's most lethal threat

Cartski, I don't know the answer to your question. That is why I put the caveat at the top. This may be a journalists interpretation of events.

 

[cartski]

Re: Bird flu still world's most lethal threat

I'll search for the NIH article.

Kennedy Shorthridge is easier to find:

http://birdflubook.com/a.php?id=115

" Influenza epidemics and pandemics are not new. Yet it wasn?t until 1982 that the late Professor Sir Charles Stuart-Harris and I put forward the hypothesis that southern China is an epicentre for the emergence of pandemic influenza viruses, the seeds for which had been germinating for 4,500 years when it was believed the duck was first domesticated in that region. This established the influenza virus gene pool in southern China?s farmyards.

Indeed, molecular and genetic evidence suggests that the chicken is not a natural host for influenza. Rather, the domestic duck is the silent intestinal carrier of avian influenza viruses being raised in close proximity to habitation.

It is the siting of large-scale chicken production units, particularly in southern China where avian influenza viruses abound, that is the crux of the problem. There, domestic ducks have been raised on rivers, waterways, and, more recently, with the flooded rice crops cultivated each year. The importation of industrial poultry farming into that same region introduced millions of chickens?highly stressed due to intensive production practices and unsanitary conditions?into this avian influenza virus milieu. The result? An influenza accident waiting to happen. The H5N1 virus signalled its appearance in Hong Kong in 1997, and has since made its way into dozens of countries, infected millions of birds, and threatens to trigger a human catastrophe.

Michael Greger has taken on the formidable task of reviewing and synthesizing the many factors contingent upon chicken production that have brought us to the influenza threat the world now faces. Drawing upon scientific literature and media reports at large, Dr. Greger explores the hole we have dug for ourselves with our own unsavoury practices.

Indeed, while governments and the poultry industry are quick to blame migratory birds as the source of the current H5N1 avian influenza virus, and to view pandemics as natural phenomena analogous to, say, sunspots and earthquakes, in reality, human choices and actions may have had?and may continue to have?a pivotal role in the changing ecology. Now that anthropogenic behaviour has reached unprecedented levels with a concomitant pronounced zoonotic skew in emerging infectious diseases of humans, H5N1 seems like a cautionary tale of how attempts to exploit nature may backfire. The use of antibiotics as farm meal growth promoters leading to antibiotic-resistance in humans or the feeding of meat or bone meal to cattle leading to mad cow disease are cases in point: profitable in the short term for animal agriculture, but with the potential for unforeseen and disastrous consequences. Intensified, industrial poultry production has given us inexpensive chicken, but at what cost to the animals and at what heightened risk to public health? "

Above by Kennedy Shortridge.

[ I wish reporters or letter writers to newspapers would use references when they drop names. ]

J.

 

[cartski]

Re: Bird flu still world's most lethal threat

The NIH artcile may be this one:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showpost.php?p=101084&postcount=1


http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2007/nabel_flu.htm

"Led by Gary Nabel, M.D., Ph.D., director of the NIAID?s Dale and Betty Bumpers Vaccine Research Center (VRC), the team is reporting in the August 10, 2007 issue of the journal Science that they have developed a strategy to generate vaccines and therapeutic antibodies that could target predicted H5N1 mutants before these viruses evolve naturally. This advance was made possible by creating mutations in the region of the H5N1 hemagglutinin (HA) protein that directs the virus to bird or human cells and eliciting antibodies to it. "

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/e...ez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Immunization by avian H5 influenza hemagglutinin mutants with altered receptor binding specificity.Yang ZY, Wei CJ, Kong WP, Wu L, Xu L, Smith DF, Nabel GJ.
Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health, Building 40, Room 4502, Mailstop Code MSC-3005, 40 Convent Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

Influenza virus entry is mediated by the receptor binding domain (RBD) of its spike, the hemagglutinin (HA). Adaptation of avian viruses to humans is associated with HA specificity for alpha2,6- rather than alpha2,3-linked sialic acid (SA) receptors. Here, we define mutations in influenza A subtype H5N1 (avian) HA that alter its specificity for SA either by decreasing alpha2,3- or increasing alpha2,6-SA recognition. RBD mutants were used to develop vaccines and monoclonal antibodies that neutralized new variants. Structure-based modification of HA specificity can guide the development of preemptive vaccines and therapeutic monoclonal antibodies that can be evaluated before the emergence of human-adapted H5N1 strains.

PMID: 17690300 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


J.

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Bird flu still world's most lethal threat

The second paper is intriguing, wish I had access to the whole thing. Thanks Cartski.