Nature: Second mutant-flu paper published

[tetano]

Just five mutations allow H5N1 to spread between ferrets.

Ed Yong

21 June 2012


The H5N1 ‘bird flu’ virus could evolve to spread through the air between ferrets by picking up as few as five mutations, according to a long-awaited study from Ron Fouchier from the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the Netherlands1. The paper is published today in Science after months of debate about whether the benefits of publishing the research outweighed the risks.


snip

Fouchier now wants to work out the number of other individuals who catch the airborne virus for everyone who is infected. This number “needs to be higher than 1 to cause a pandemic”, he says. “We need more quantitative transmission models to start addressing that.”

But Racaniello thinks a different approach would be more effective. “I suggest that we spend research money developing more flu antivirals, and a universal flu vaccine,” he says,

Nature
doi:10.1038/nature.2012.10875

http://www.nature.com/news/second-mutant-flu-paper-published-1.10875

 

[Treyfish]

Re: Nature: Second mutant-flu paper published

<NYT_HEADLINE version="1.0" type=" ">Bird Flu Research That Stoked Fears Is Published</NYT_HEADLINE>

<NYT_BYLINE>By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

</NYT_BYLINE>Published: June 21, 2012

The more controversial of two papers describing how the lethal H5N1 bird flu could be made easier to spread was published on Thursday, six months after a scientific advisory board suggested that the papers? most potentially dangerous data be censored

The paper, by scientists at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, identified five mutations apparently necessary to make the bird flu virus spread easily among ferrets, which catch the same flus that humans do.

Only about 600 humans are known to have caught H5N1 in the last decade as it circulated in poultry and wild birds, mostly in Asia and Egypt, but more than half died of it.

The paper?s publication, in the journal Science, ended an acrimonious debate over whether such results should ever be released. Critics said they could help a rogue scientist create a superweapon. Proponents said the world needed to identify dangerous mutations so countermeasures could be designed.

?There is always a risk,? Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said:tiphat:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/22/health/h5n1-bird-flu-research-that-stoked-fears-is-published.html..

 

[sharon sanders]

Re: Nature: Second mutant-flu paper published

Paper here:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=457872#post457872


Lengthy discussion here:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?p=457874#post457874

 

[tetano]

Re: Nature: Second mutant-flu paper published

Nature | News Feature
Influenza: Five questions on H5N1

Scientists now know that the deadly bird flu virus is capable of causing a human pandemic. That makes tackling the remaining unknowns all the more urgent.

Ed Yong

21 June 2012


The biology of the H5N1 avian influenza virus is rife with paradoxes. The virus is widespread, but hard to detect. It kills more than half of the people known to be infected, but thousands of those exposed have no apparent problems. It seems to be just a few mutations away from gaining the ability to spread from person to person, but despite more than 16 years of fast-paced evolution, it has failed to do so.

...


http://www.nature.com/news/influenza-five-questions-on-h5n1-1.10874

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: Nature: Second mutant-flu paper published

It is perhaps useful to remind that - despite the new fanfare - the likelihood of an H5N1 influenza pandemic remains the same as a month, a year or five years ago.

It is also useful to underline the facts that an half a dozen of ferrets is not equal to the population of the people living in endemic areas in contact - daily - with the H5N1: millions.

Then we can discuss of the advancements in virus biological properties and ecology after the new insights revealed by the most recent airborne transmission studies in a much more terse state of mind. (IOH)