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Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Theresa42

Theresa42

Well-known member
Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus
Monday January 15, 3:54 PM

(Kyodo) - About 100 of 500 stray cats surveyed in Indonesia were carrying the H5N1 bird flu virus, a local scientist said Monday.

C.A. Nidom, who first reported that bird flu had entered Indonesia in 2003 but was ignored by the government, told Kyodo News the finding was based on his research funded by the Ministry of National Education and conducted on Java Island and in Lampung Province of Sumatra Island from September to December last year.

"I will bring the results of my research to the Institute of Medical Science of the University of Tokyo next month for further tests," he said by telephone from Saudi Arabia.

"I'm worried that the virus will be more easily transmitted to humans because the body temperature of mammals like cats is similar to that of humans," he added.

He took blood samples from cats living around wet markets that sell chickens and hospitals designated for bird flu patients in the East Java provincial capital Surabaya, the Central Java provincial capital Semarang, West Java's Bandung, Lampung's Bandarlampung, and Jakarta and its suburb Tangerang.

Nidom, a molecular biology expert at the state-run University of Airlangga, said the results were reported to the Health Ministry, but they have not been published and followed up on.

I Nyoman Kandun, director for disease control and environmental health at the Health Ministry, said he has not received any information about the results of the research by Nidom, who is also a member of a government-sanctioned commission on bird flu control and preparedness.

There are many unproven "rumors" about bird flu, Kandun said.

The education ministry has allocated about 300 million rupiah (about $32,500) for bird flu research in fiscal 2006 and 2007.

After no bird flu cases among humans were recorded in the country for three months, new cases began to emerge with the deaths of four people in as many days last week.

Another patient, the 18-year-old son of a 38-year-old woman who died last week, has also tested positive for bird flu, marking the country's first bird flu cluster this year. The son is still being treated in hospital.

Since bird flu began to hit Indonesia in mid-2003, up to 15 million infected fowl have died in 224 regencies in 30 of the country's 33 provinces.

The government said 16 of the 30 provinces are considered to be free of bird flu, having had no cases in the last six months.

World Health Organization statistics as of last Friday showed that bird flu has infected 265 people in 10 countries since its emergence in December 2003, with 159 of them having died, among them 59 Indonesians. That did not take account of the two who died late Friday and early Saturday.

Indonesia's lead is followed by Vietnam with 42 fatalities and Thailand with 17. The other affected countries are Azerbaijan, Cambodia, China, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq and Turkey.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070115/kyodo/d8mlj6o00.html
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Niman has talked about a "mammalian" reservior in Indonesia.

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11370&highlight=niman+cats

H5N1 in Cats in Indonesia
Recombinomics Commentary
October 7, 2006

A study conducted by the Indonesian Environment Information Center (PILI) in Yogyakarta found that stray cats had caught the H5N1 virus through contact with infected poultry at traditional markets.

The above comments provide additional evidence implicating an alternative source of H5N1 human infections in Indonesia. Recently, Indonesia summarized the results of poultry tests by a WHO affiliated lab in Australia. Concerns had been voiced in an H5N1 meeting in Jakarta in June because the sequences from the vast majority of human cases on Java did not match the poultry H5N1 collected between 2003 and 2005. Consequently, 91 poultry samples were sent to Australia for virus isolation and sequencing. The samples were from collections between September 2005 and March 2006 and failed to match Java poultry isolates with most of the sequences from patients.

All but one of the human isolates from patients on Java had a novel cleavage site, RESRRKKR, as well as a number of associated changes in all 8 gene segments that readily distinguished the human sequences from the poultry sequence (see green sequences in lower branch). One duck from Indramayu had the novel cleavage site, but that duck isolates had additional changes, including a silent change in the cleavage site, which was found in only a small subset of human isolates. The vast majority of human isolates, including those from Indramayu, failed to match the duck sequences. Two matching sequences were found in chickens in central Sumatra, but the match failure on Java, coupled with the almost universal matching of human sequences, including the first sequence isolate in July 2005 as well as isolates from a wide range of geographical locations, including East Java, suggested human infections were largely due to H5N1 in a reservoir other than poultry.

The only match on Java of the human sequences was from a throat swab of a cat. A/feline/Indonesia/CDC1/2006(H5N1), from Jakarta on January 22, 2006. H5N1 has also been detected in swine in Indonesia, but the swine sequences, including the HA cleavage site, did not match the human sequences. The discovery of more H5N1 in cats in Indonesia raises the possibility that the cats are also in contact with an alternate reservoir.

Sequence data on H5N1 from cats, and ?infected poultry in traditional markets?, including those in and around Jakarta, where most of the reported human cases have been located, would help resolve the role of cats in H5N1 transmission.

Media Sources

Phylogenetic Trees

http://www.recombinomics.com/News/10...esia_Cats.html
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

What about rabbits in Indonesia? Since they're known H5N1 carriers elsewhere, anything similar is suspect.

It seems they're pushing rabbit meat as an industry. see Indonesian Rabbit Conference at http://world-rabbit-science.org/IB-Conf.htm It seems Indo is a primary SE ASian rabbit producer - see http://www.mybunnyfarm.com/science/ch1.htm.

also from http://www.animalinfo.org/species/nesonets.htm...

The Sumatran rabbit weighs about 1.5 kg (3.3 lb) and lives only in remote mountain forest. It is completely nocturnal, hiding during the day in dark places at the base of trees, in burrows (not of its own making), or holes in the ground. This rabbit subsists on a diet of leaves and stalks from forest understory plants.

The Sumatran rabbit apparently was never abundant anywhere in its range. It is restricted to montane forest in the Barisan Mountains, in west and southwest Sumatra, Indonesia, with one record in 1972 from Guning Leuser National Park in northwest Sumatra.

.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

the problem is, where does the evolution happen ?
We would need cat2cat or rabbit2rabbit too.
cat2rabbit2cat2rabbit2...
or such
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

gsgs said:
the problem is, where does the evolution happen ?
We would need cat2cat or rabbit2rabbit too.
cat2rabbit2cat2rabbit2...
or such
Click to expand...

or mig bird2duck2rabbit2cat2human !!!

And put chickens in anywhere in the progression.

Just like SARS - multiple mammalian species jumps.

.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

are you sure for rabbits ? all sorts of rabbits ?
I only have find : white rabbit of new zealand ( experiment in laboratory )
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

This particular AI is setting records - first to kill it's reservoir species, first to kill...cats, marmots, mink, etc. I'd hate to use it's old habits as the definitive word.

.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

After more digging....perhaps a more qualified person than myself can explain this from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=9658077&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum

Molecular mechanisms of serum resistance of human influenza H3N2 virus and their involvement in virus adaptation in a new host.

.H3N2 human influenza viruses that are resistant to horse, pig, or rabbit serum possess unique amino acid mutations in their hemagglutinin (HA) protein. ....The major inhibitory activity in rabbit serum was found to be a beta inhibitor with characteristics of mannose-binding lectins. Rabbit serum-resistant variants exhibited decreased sensitivity to this inhibitor due to the loss of a glycosylation sequon at positions 246 to 248 of the HA.
----------------------

So are they saying that the status of positions 246 and 248 can determine whether an influenza can bind or not with rabbits? Since those are the same positions that are changing elsewhere, what are they implications?

.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Based on my 2-3 weeks in Indonesia in 1988, travelling into the countryside in Java and Sulawesi, I report that I saw NO RABBITS being raised as food.

For me, what were remarkable were: dogs in cages near family homes, fish in private ponds on family estates, chickens ubiquitiously, but no rabbits.

Indonesians do not eat cats, and there were no monkeys offered tat I recollect at any of the wet markets I explored.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Per capita rabbit consumption in Indonesia is .27 kg/year, as compared to .14 kg/yr in the US, .23 kg/yr in Canada, while in Italy it is 5.71 kg/yr, France is 2.76, and Malta is 8.89 kg/yr.


Rabbit is a permissable meat in Islam.

.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Avian influenza H5N1 in naturally infected domestic cat.

1: Emerg Infect Dis. 2006 Apr;12(4):681-3.

Songsermn T, Amonsin A, Jam-on R, Sae-Heng N, Meemak N, Pariyothorn N, Payungporn S, Theamboonlers A, Poovorawan Y.

Kassetsart University, Nakorn Pathom, Thailand.

We report H5N1 virus infection in a domestic cat infected by eating a pigeon carcass.

The virus isolated from the pigeon and the cat showed the same cluster as the viruses obtained during the outbreak in Thailand.

Since cats are common house pets, concern regarding disease transmission to humans exists.

PMID: 16704821 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...Retrieve&dopt=abstractplus&list_uids=16704821
 
From October 2006

From October 2006

Pigs, cats in Indonesia infected with H5N1

Oct 10, 2006 (CIDRAP News) ? Pigs and stray cats have been found infected with the H5N1 avian influenza virus in Indonesia, adding to the few previous reports of such cases, according to news services.

A study from Udayana University found that two pigs on the island of Bali were infected with the H5N1 virus in July, senior agriculture minister Musni Suatmodjo told Reuters yesterday. According to news reports, veterinary faculty from the university discovered the infected pigs in Bali's south-central Gianyar and Tabanan regencies.....

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=11479
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

There has also been a lot of recent (last 2 years) experimental work on feral/domestic cats as reservoirs and transmission vectors:

"Influenza A Virus (H5N1) Infection in Cats Causes Systemic Disease with Potential Novel Routes of Virus Spread within and between Hosts" in the American Journal of Pathology last January (2006).
Abstract:
The ongoing outbreak of avian influenza A virus
(subtype H5N1) infection in Asia is of great concern
because of the high human case fatality rate and the
threat of a new influenza pandemic. Case reports in
humans and felids suggest that this virus may have
a different tissue tropism from other influenza viruses,
which are normally restricted to the respiratory
tract in mammals. To study its pathogenesis in
a mammalian host, domestic cats were inoculated
with H5N1 virus intratracheally (n 3), by feeding
on virus-infected chicks (n 3), or by horizontal
transmission (n 2) and examined by virological
and pathological assays. In all cats , virus replicated
not only in the respiratory tract but also in multiple
extra-respiratory tissues. Virus antigen expression
in these tissues was associated with severe necrosis
and inflammation 7 days after inoculation. In cats
fed on virus-infected chicks only, virus-associated
ganglioneuritis also occurred in the submucosal
and myenteric plexi of the small intestine, suggesting
direct infection from the intestinal lumen. All
cats excreted virus not only via the respiratory tract
but also via the digestive tract. This study in cats
demonstrates that H5N1 virus infection causes systemic
disease and spreads by potentially novel
routes within and between mammalian hosts. (Am
J Pathol 2006, 168:176?183; DOI: 10.2353/ajpath.2006.050466)


Also in Science:
Avian H5N1 Influenza in Cats Science (2004).
Abstract:
During the 2003-2004 outbreak of avian influenza A (H5N1) virus in Asia, there were anecdotal reports of fatal infection in domestic cats, although this species is considered resistant to influenza. We experimentally inoculated cats with H5N1 virus intratracheally and by feeding virus-infected chickens. The cats excreted virus, developed severe diffuse alveolar damage, and transmitted virus to sentinel cats. These results show that domestic cats are at risk of disease or death from H5N1 virus, can be infected by horizontal transmission, and may play a role in the epidemiology of this virus.
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Hat-tip, Ree!

Bird Flu update: Alarm as infected stray cats roam the streets

16 Jan 2007
Amy Chew reporting from Jakarta

AT least 100 stray cats roaming the streets of major cities in Indonesia are infected with the deadly H5N1 virus, which causes avian influenza.

The irony is that when tests were conducted on 500 stray cats in Jakarta, Surabaya, Semarang, Bandung, Tangerang and Lampung, and the 100 were found to be infected, they were all released back onto the streets.

Dr C.A. Nidom, head of Avian Influenza Laboratorium at the University of Airlangga, said the tests were conducted from September to December last year.

When asked why the infected felines were released into the streets, he said: "I had no right to destroy them."

He said the stray cats were collected from markets selling chicken and in the vicinity of hospitals designated to treat bird flu patients.

The findings come as the bird flu death toll hit a new high in Indonesia over the weekend after two people died, bringing the number to 61, the highest number of fatalities in the world.

Dr Nidom said the government should do more to stop the spread of the virus and warned that it threatened to be a global problem.

"The tests showed that the virus is becoming more complex. We have to change our thinking and look at the possibility that the virus can spread to humans not only through chickens but also through other animals."

Bird flu is passed to humans through contact with infected chicken and other birds or their faeces.

Scientists are worried the virus will mutate into a form where it could spread through human-to-human contact, which could trigger a global pandemic capable of infecting millions of people in a short period of time.

"The cat?s biological make-up is much closer to that of humans than chicken. A cat also has the same body temperature as humans, whereas a chicken does not.

"I am quite taken aback by the results. Further research needs to be done to see whether cats can transmit this disease," he added.

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/nst/Tuesday/National/20070116084009/Article/local1_html
 
Re: Indonesia scientist says 1/5th of stray cats carry bird flu virus

Click to PrintDeadly H5N1 may be brewing in cats
24 January 2007
From New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
Debora Mackenzie
Bird flu hasn't gone away. The discovery, announced last week, that the H5N1 bird flu virus is widespread in cats in locations across Indonesia has refocused attention on the danger that the deadly virus could be mutating into a form that can infect humans far more easily.

In the first survey of its kind, an Indonesian scientist has found that in areas where there have been outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry and humans, 1 in 5 cats have been infected with the virus, and survived. This suggests that as outbreaks continue to flare across Asia and Africa, H5N1 will have vastly more opportunities to adapt to mammals than had been supposed.

Chairul Anwar Nidom of Airlangga University in Surabaya, Indonesia, told journalists last week that he had taken blood samples from 500 stray cats near poultry markets in four areas of Java, including the capital, Jakarta, and one area in Sumatra, all of which have recently had outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry and people.

Of these cats, 20 per cent carried antibodies to H5N1. This does not mean that they were still carrying the virus, only that they had been infected - probably through eating birds that had H5N1. Many other cats that were infected are likely to have died from the resulting illness, so many more than 20 per cent of the original cat populations may have acquired H5N1.

This is a much higher rate of infection than has been found in surveys of apparently healthy birds in Asia. "I am quite taken aback by the results," says Nidom, who also found the virus in Indonesian pigs in 2005. He plans further tests of the samples at the University of Tokyo in February.

Amin Soebandrio, head of medical sciences at the Indonesian ministry for research and technology, confirmed the report. He says that the infection has also been found in dogs and cats on the Indonesian island of Bali, which has also had outbreaks of H5N1. The new findings follow reports that unusually large numbers of dead cats have been found near many outbreaks of H5N1. "Javanese farmers even have a word for the cat disease," says Albert Osterhaus of Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. It was Osterhaus's lab which in 2004 found that cats can catch the H5N1 virus. Like humans, some cats die, and some recover. But unlike humans, infected cats shed large amounts of the virus and pass it to each other.

Infected cats may not directly increase the danger of people catching the virus, as humans seem to catch the current strain only with difficulty even from birds, which they kill, pluck and eat. The main worry, says Osterhaus, is that as the virus replicates in cats it will further adapt to mammals and acquire the ability to spread more efficiently to people and from person to person, unleashing a human pandemic.

Nidom's findings are the first to indicate what proportion of cats can become infected by H5N1. No cats have been tested in Hong Kong or China. In Bangkok, Thailand, all the cats in one household are known to have died of H5N1 in 2004. Tigers and leopards in Thai zoos also died, while last year two cats near an outbreak in poultry and people in Iraq were confirmed to have died of H5N1, as were three German cats that ate wild birds. In Austria cats were infected but remained healthy (New Scientist, 18 March 2006, p 6).

Though Osterhaus says Nidom's figures must be confirmed, he says they aren't surprising, and is even encouraged that they aren't worse. A higher percentage of infected predators than prey makes sense, as each predator eats many prey animals. "At least that percentage shows the virus has not completely adapted to cats - yet," Osterhaus says. If it had, all cats in a stricken area should be infected, as with ordinary flu in humans.

Osterhaus emphasises that the cat infections still pose a potential threat. "We know the 1918 pandemic was a bird flu virus that adapted to mammals in some intermediate mammalian host, possibly pigs," he says. "Maybe for H5N1 the intermediate host is cats." If similar percentages of cats are infected at every outbreak location, there must have been many thousands of cat infections since the virus emerged, compared to 267 confirmed cases in humans. Every sick cat is a chance for the virus to adapt, and with renewed outbreaks this year in birds, people or both in China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Thailand, Egypt and Nigeria, it is getting plenty of such chances.

Killing cats won't solve the problem, Osterhaus warns. Like shooting wild birds, it is unlikely to have much impact and could send infected animals elsewhere. It would also lead to a population explosion of disease-carrying rodents, which the cats normally keep in check.

"Cats must just be kept from eating sick chickens," Osterhaus says, though this will be a tall order in open-air markets across Asia and Africa, which are typically swarming with hungry cats. In Jakarta this week, officials are slaughtering thousands of banned backyard poultry - then handing them back for their owners to eat. Some of the birds could well be infected despite appearing healthy. It is hard to imagine the local cats not getting their share.

Will the drugs still work?
In late December, a man and his niece died of H5N1 flu in Gharbiyah province in Egypt's Nile delta. Both had been taking the antiviral drug Tamiflu and both were found to be infected with a virus containing a mutation that makes it partially resistant to the drug. They had been on Tamiflu for only two days, so the virus may already have been resistant when they caught it.

This is a worrying development. Tamiflu-resistant strains are not usually contagious because the mutations that make the virus resistant usually also cripple it. Countries with stockpiles of Tamiflu had been hoping this might limit the spread of drug-resistant strains during a pandemic, but resistance mutations have recently been seen that don't slow the virus's spread so much.

Marc Lipsitch and colleagues at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston have used a computer model to assess the likely impact of such mutations. They showed that if a drug-resistance mutation emerges during a pandemic that cuts the virus's fitness by 20 per cent or less, the resistant strain will have so much advantage over non-resistant viruses that it will spread until perhaps a third or more of all cases are drug-resistant (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040015). This will happen, they predict, even if such strains emerge very rarely.

"This may mean fewer deaths, or more, depending on how the resistant virus behaves," says Lipsitch, who points to an unexpected bright spot of his team's findings. "What surprised us is that even if the resistant strain spreads quite widely, its emergence will delay the peak of the pandemic by as much as a year." This happens because the resistant strain is less fit and also because it takes time to get going.

This is good news because as much as possible needs to be done to provide a breathing space at the beginning of a pandemic. "The whole point is to delay the pandemic until we can get a good vaccine made," Lipsitch says. The model showed that it should be possible to extend such a delay by closing schools or giving people a partially effective pre-pandemic vaccine against H5 flu.

An even bigger computer model of a flu pandemic published in the same journal (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0040013), echoes these findings. Alessandro Vespignani at Indiana University, Bloomington, and colleagues found that as long as every person infected with pandemic flu infects fewer than two more people, antivirals could delay the pandemic peak by a year. During the 1918 flu pandemic, each infected person is thought to have spread it to 1.8 people, on average.

Since few of the countries where a pandemic virus is most likely to emerge have adequate stockpiles of antivirals, rich countries will need to pitch in to achieve this. Strategically sharing just 10 per cent of their stockpiles should be enough to make this strategy work, the study suggests.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19325883.800-deadly-h5n1-may-be-brewing-in-cats.html
 
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