Bird Flu Mutations Likely To Trigger Pandemic Identified

Fox News ^ | 11-16-2006 | Daniel J DeNoon

[blam]

Bird Flu Mutations Likely to Trigger Pandemic Identified

Thursday, November 16, 2006

By Daniel J. DeNoon

Either of two simple bird flu virus mutations could trigger a deadly pandemic, Japanese scientists warn.

Both mutations already have popped up in humans infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus.

They've been seen in bird flu viruses isolated from two people in Azerbaijan and from one person in Iraq, according to the Japanese scientists. Neither mutation has been seen among the more than 600 H5N1 viruses isolated from birds.

The two human mutations give the bird flu virus the ability to attach to human cells. It's the kind of mutation seen early in the 1918, 1957, and 1968 flu pandemics, warn Shinya Yamada of the University of Tokyo and colleagues.

Fortunately, the H5N1 viruses carrying these mutations do not appear to have caused any outbreaks of human-to-human transmission.

But these mutants seem capable of replicating in humans -- "an essential indicator of pandemic potential," the researchers report.

Flu viruses attach to receptor molecules on the outside of cells that line the airway.

[blam]

I read this to mean that the mutations that can cause a human to human pandemic are out 'there' and have been identified, right?

[blam]

BF Ping.

[Joe 6-pack]

The only known cure is nicotine.

[DoughtyOne]

Joe, you should know better.

The cure is the 24 pack (case).

[Domandred]

The only known cure is nicotine.

Ah bloody hell I just quit smoking twelve days ago

[Joe 6-pack]

"Ah bloody hell I just quit smoking twelve days ago"

You're going to die.

[cajungirl]

yep, looks like it.

[blam]

Bird Flu's Pandemic Potential

Researchers Uncover Key Mutations in Virus That Allow Human Infection

A graphic of the microscopic H5N1 virus. A new discovery puts researchers one step closer in predicting how this virus could change form, allowing it to pass from one human to another. (ABCNEWS.com)

By DAN CHILDS
ABC News Medical Unit

Nov. 16, 2006 — "Know thy enemy" — many would consider that one of the most crucial rules of engagement in any war.

Now those waging war against the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus have come one step closer to knowing their enemy, or at least understanding how this crafty bug makes the leap from birds to humans.

In a letter published in the current issue of Nature, lead researcher Yoshihiro Kawaoka and his colleagues have identified two key changes that took place in some versions of the viral strain that allowed the virus to infect not only chickens and ducks but humans as well.

Kawaoka, a professor of virology at both the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Tokyo, noted in the letter that the findings could help those tracking the virus determine the likelihood that a given strain could spread from birds to humans and from one person to another.

"The findings described by Kawaoka and associates address an important issue related to the process by which an avian or bird influenza virus could acquire the ability to infect humans," says Dr. Steven Hinrichs, director of the Nebraska Public Health Lab and director of the University of Nebraska Center for Biosecurity.

"It is a useful research tool," adds Dr. Gregory A. Poland, chief of the Mayo Vaccine Research Group and associate chair for research at the Mayo Clinic department of medicine in Rochester, Minn. "We can now begin to look at all of the known H5N1 strains and see whether these changes have occurred. If so, we can raise the red flag."

With regard to raising this flag, Hinrichs says that for a bird influenza virus to reach the level of a pandemic and become dangerous to humans, three things must occur. First, the bird virus must be virulent or capable of causing disease. Second, it must be a new virus that can avoid our existing immune system. And third, the virus must be able to spread from human to human.

"At the present time, the current H5N1 virus has only the first two characteristics," he says. "Dr. Kawaoka's research findings add to our ability to detect the basic element of the third characteristic, the ability to pass infection from human to human.

(Story continues at the ABC site)

[buffyt]

I was born in 1951 and I don't remember the pandemics listed in 1957 or 1968. I was a senior in high school in 1968.

[mutley]

"Ah bloody hell I just quit smoking twelve days ago"

Dead man posting.

[DaiHuy]

Ahhh yes the flu season is upon us, all the stores selling cheap flu shots, time to scare the sheeple into submission, so roll out the bird flu scare.

[toomanygrasshoppers]

Ping

[mutley]

Nothing like a good flu pandemic to make for an interesting news day. Just how doomed are we? Slightly doomed? Sort of doomed? Verwy, verwy, doomed? Inquiring minds want to know.

[DaiHuy]

wow buffy your hot.

I was born in 51 also and I certainly don't remember those pandemics either, seems like the only pandemic in 68 was the one that snagged kids out of high school and put them in the army.

[blam]

"I was born in 1951 and I don't remember the pandemics listed in 1957 or 1968."

I was born in 1943 and my only child was born in 1968. I don't remember them either. Maybe it was because it didn't kill 50% of the people who got it like this one is doing so far.(?)

[blam]

"Just how doomed are we? Slightly doomed? Sort of doomed? Verwy, verwy, doomed? Inquiring minds want to know."

I report, you decide.

[little jeremiah]

Seen this?

http://www.fluwikie2.com/pmwiki.php?n=Forum.NabarroSaysPandemicIn2007

Nabarro Says Pandemic in 2007

The article isn't on the thread but there's a link to it, I haven't scrolled down the thread yet. Doing a few things at once as usual, and as usual, SNAFUing them all.

[VeniVidiVici]

I was born in 1951 and I don't remember the pandemics listed in 1957 or 1968. I was a senior in high school in 1968.

The Democrat hero Soviets had their own pandemic in late 1956/1957 and in 1968. First in Hungary and then Czechoslovakia.

[sbMKE]

The 1957 and 1968 pandemics claimed about 100,000 total combined.

I read on the subject not too long ago, after a PR consultant tried to sell me on the merits of "pandemic planning" as part of a communications plan. The most recent pandemics weren't much more lethal than annual flu outbreaks.

[Doomonyou]

Damn.

We're all gonna die AGAIN!