FLU ROUNDUP: NEW CLUSTER PROMPTS CONCERN
Washington, DC, United States (UPI) -- A cluster of suspected bird flu cases in Indonesia has raised concerns about human-to-human transmission -- just as a new American study suggests such cases may never lead to a pandemic.
Health officials said the cases occurred in the Karo district of northern Sumatra, the same area where seven members of the same family died earlier this year.
In the new cluster, two of the patients are sisters; three belong to the same family; two more are neighbors of those three.
Infected chickens were discovered in the area. In May, seven family members died of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus in the Karo district, raising concerns that the virus had mutated into a human-to-human strain.
Meanwhile, however, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, contrary to widespread fears, the lethal H5N1 strain doesn`t combine well with the most common form of human influenza. That means -- despite isolated cases of human transmission through close familial contact as may have occurred in Indonesia -- bird flu could lack the machinery to cause a pandemic among humans.
The CDC team cooked up a hybrid virus with genes from both the human and avian flu viruses and inoculated ferrets to see if they would get sick.
'Simple combinations of genes from both parent viruses have not led to enhanced transmissibility in the ferret,' said the CDC director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, at a press conference.
'These data do not mean that H5N1 cannot develop into a pandemic strain. It means that the genetics of that transformation are more complicated than a simple one-to-one exchange. We are far from out of the woods on a global scale.'
In other news on the avian flu frontier:
-- International cooperation is proving tricky, at least between some countries. Thailand`s foreign minister was seeking an explanation for the sudden cancellation of a meeting by his Laotian counterpart to develop a bird flu containment plan, the Thai News Agency reported.
Thai officials suspect Laos was upset with media reports blaming it for a new outbreak of H5N1 among poultry in a Thai border province.
-- In Turkey, the health ministry told local authorities to prepare for outbreaks this fall including among humans, the Turkish Daily News reported.
Turkey has culled 10 million birds to date but fears that new infections from birds migrating during the fall or winter could be 'even more dangerous,' the newspaper said.
Source: http://news.monstersandcritics.com/...8.php/Flu_Roundup_New_cluster_prompts_concern
Washington, DC, United States (UPI) -- A cluster of suspected bird flu cases in Indonesia has raised concerns about human-to-human transmission -- just as a new American study suggests such cases may never lead to a pandemic.
Health officials said the cases occurred in the Karo district of northern Sumatra, the same area where seven members of the same family died earlier this year.
In the new cluster, two of the patients are sisters; three belong to the same family; two more are neighbors of those three.
Infected chickens were discovered in the area. In May, seven family members died of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus in the Karo district, raising concerns that the virus had mutated into a human-to-human strain.
Meanwhile, however, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, contrary to widespread fears, the lethal H5N1 strain doesn`t combine well with the most common form of human influenza. That means -- despite isolated cases of human transmission through close familial contact as may have occurred in Indonesia -- bird flu could lack the machinery to cause a pandemic among humans.
The CDC team cooked up a hybrid virus with genes from both the human and avian flu viruses and inoculated ferrets to see if they would get sick.
'Simple combinations of genes from both parent viruses have not led to enhanced transmissibility in the ferret,' said the CDC director, Dr. Julie Gerberding, at a press conference.
'These data do not mean that H5N1 cannot develop into a pandemic strain. It means that the genetics of that transformation are more complicated than a simple one-to-one exchange. We are far from out of the woods on a global scale.'
In other news on the avian flu frontier:
-- International cooperation is proving tricky, at least between some countries. Thailand`s foreign minister was seeking an explanation for the sudden cancellation of a meeting by his Laotian counterpart to develop a bird flu containment plan, the Thai News Agency reported.
Thai officials suspect Laos was upset with media reports blaming it for a new outbreak of H5N1 among poultry in a Thai border province.
-- In Turkey, the health ministry told local authorities to prepare for outbreaks this fall including among humans, the Turkish Daily News reported.
Turkey has culled 10 million birds to date but fears that new infections from birds migrating during the fall or winter could be 'even more dangerous,' the newspaper said.
Source: http://news.monstersandcritics.com/...8.php/Flu_Roundup_New_cluster_prompts_concern