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Researchers at Rutgers University and The University of Texas at Austin have reported a discovery that could help scientists develop drugs to fight the much-feared bird flu and other virulent strains of influenza. The researchers have determined the three-dimensional structure of a site on an influenza A virus protein that binds to one of its human protein targets, thereby suppressing a person's natural defenses to the infection and paving the way for the virus to replicate efficiently. This so-called NS1 virus protein is shared by all influenza A viruses isolated from humans - including avian influenza, or bird flu, and...

Scientists have discovered how bird flu adapts in patients, offering a new way to monitor the disease and prevent a pandemic, according to research published in the August issue of the Journal of General Virology. Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus has spread through at least 45 countries in 3 continents. Despite its ability to spread, it cannot be transmitted efficiently from human to human. This indicates it is not fully adapted to its new host species, the human. However, this new research reveals mutations in the virus that may result in a pandemic. "The mutations needed for the emergence...

16:36' 24/03/2008 (GMT+7) After four years of research, scientists at the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology have announced they will test type A/H5N1 vaccine on humans this April and the vaccine will be available on the market in 2009. Last stage of H5N1 vaccine There was good news for scientists at the National Institute for Hygiene and Epidemiology: the Ministry of Health agreed to let them test H5N1 vaccine on humans. The over-four year process of researching H5N1 virus carried out by the scientists is at last in the final stage. In early March 2008, a group of scientists...

17:46' 04/04/2008 (GMT+7) Scientists inject the vaccine in monkeys on Reu Island, Quang Ninh province in 2004. Vaccine and Biomedical Product Company 1 on April 3 injected a second dose of H5N1 vaccine in ten volunteers. Vietnam to produce H5N1 vaccine in 2009This test aims to verify the safety of H5N1 vaccine in humans. After the injection, all volunteers were in normal condition. These people will be monitored for seven days more to ensure the safety of the vaccine. On March 6, these people took the first dose of type A/H5N1 vaccine and no abnormal symptoms were recorded before they...

Ducks, people and rice paddies are the primary forces driving outbreaks of avian influenza in Thailand and Vietnam, and the number of chickens is less pivotal, scientists said on Wednesday. U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization experts and others looked at three waves of H5N1 bird flu in Thailand and Vietnam in 2004 and 2005. The virus has killed 236 people in 12 countries since 2003. They used computer modeling to study how various factors were involved in the spread of the virus, including the numbers of ducks, geese and chickens, human population size, rice cultivation and local geography. Even though...

Associated Press Chinese officials have confirmed that bird flu was to blame for killing chickens in poultry markets in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, Hong Kong's health bureau Sunday. China's Ministry of Agriculture notified the administration that the birds tested positive for the H5N1 bird flu virus, marking the country's fifth outbreak among poultry this year, Hong Kong's Food and Health Bureau said in a statement. The Ministry of Agriculture also said on its Web site that last week's outbreak in Guangzhou killed 114 birds and resulted in the slaughter of 518 others. But it has been contained, the...

MARGRAM (BIRBHUM): Hundreds of goats have died of an unknown disease over the past four days in Birbhum's Rampurhat block II. Some experts warned that if the H5N1 virus — which causes bird flu — has jumped from birds to mammals, it could be the turn of humans next. TOI met jittery villagers in Dakhalbati, one of the affected villages in Birbhum's Margram. Abdul Mohid, a farmer, said his goat was shivering and sneezing and saliva was oozing from its mouth. Mohid had called in a local vet, who could only say the animal was suffering from high fever but...

Officials in the Indian state of West Bengal say that the bird flu epidemic has spread to two more of the state's 19 districts, taking the total to nine. They say that the spread of the H5N1 virus means that even more chicken and duck will have to be killed than was originally estimated. On Monday officials said that around 2m birds would need to be culled - a figure that will now rise. Health experts have warned that the outbreak could get out of control.

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) - The H5N1 bird flu virus may sometimes stick to surfaces or get kicked up in fertilizer dust to infect people, according to a World Health Organization report published on Wednesday. The WHO team reviewed all known human cases of avian influenza, which has infected 350 people in 14 countries and killed 217 of them since 2003, and found that 25 percent of cases have no explanation. Most are passed directly from bird to people, they noted in their report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. And very rarely one person can infect another...

Egypt: 4 Women Die of Bird Flu By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Published: January 3, 2008 Bird flu has killed four Egyptian women in the past week, according to Egyptian health officials and the World Health Organization. The women, ages 25 to 50, were from different provinces, and the cases were not related, officials said. At least one was a chicken seller, and the others were said to have kept poultry at home. The H5N1 strain of avian flu appears endemic in Egyptian poultry; previously the last human case was in June. A total of 43 Egyptians have been infected...

A vaccine that could help to control a flu pandemic has shown encouraging results in its first human trials. The vaccine, made by Acambis, based in Cambridge, should protect against all strains of influenza A, the type responsible for pandemics. Unlike existing vaccines it does not have to be reformulated each year to match the prevalent strains of flu, so it could be stockpiled and used as soon as a pandemic strain emerges. Nor does it need to be grown on fertilised chicken eggs, as the existing vaccines do, but can be produced by cell culture. The results, announced yesterday...

AP Medical Writer HANOI, Vietnam --Limited human-to-human bird flu transmission may have occurred in Pakistan, but no new infections have been reported for two weeks and there appears to be no threat of further spread, a top World Health Organization official said. A WHO team has finished its initial investigation in Pakistan after up to nine patients, including several family members, were suspected of being infected with the H5N1 bird flu virus in areas north of Islamabad. They were the country's first reported human cases. The experts were expected back in Geneva to begin piecing together how the virus may...

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan is urging provincial authorities to obey health guidelines to stop any bird flu outbreaks after fears lapses in poultry culling methods led to eight people being infected with the H5N1 virus. The Health Ministry is sending out messages via radio and pamphlets to villages and farms in North West Frontier Province, where the eight people, including a veterinarian involved in culling, were infected in South Asia's first human cases. The vet's brother died of bird flu. A third brother also died but it is unclear if he was also infected with the virus. "These winter months...

KUWAIT: Officials reported that an Indian expatriate was just completing his travel procedures at Kuwait International Airport to travel to Hyderabad City in India by Indian Airlines. They said he presented two tickets - one for him and second for his eight-year-old child. Customs personnel however noticed that he approached the counter alone leaving his child in the waiting hall. The customs personnel then asked him about the child to which he answered them that he suspected that his child might be suffering from the bird flu virus, which is why he wanted to complete the travel procedures and only...

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Six people caught H5N1 bird flu in northern Pakistan last month and at least one person with the disease has died, the government said Saturday. The World Health Organization confirmed all six cases were positive for the H5N1 strain of bird flu in preliminary testing, but said a second round of analysis was being conducted to make sure. If confirmed, the infections would be the first in humans in South Asia. The Health Ministry said it had tested several patients and others whom they had come into contact with in late October. The results for six people from...

Authorities in Pakistan have announced that country's first reported cases of H5N1 avian flu in a cluster of family members which may have involved human-to-human transmission. There was some confusion Saturday about how many people had tested positive for the virus, with Pakistan announcing six cases but an official of the World Health Organization suggesting as many as nine people may have tested positive for the virus in that country. The WHO spokesperson said investigations are still underway to try to determine how the various people became infected, but some human-to-human spread is possible. "We can't rule it out,'' WHO...

Father catches bird flu that killed his son By Roger Highfield Last Updated: 3:01am GMT 08/12/2007 Fears that the virus responsible for bird flu has evolved to spread between people have been raised after the father of a man who died from the disease was reported to have developed the infection. Humans can contract the potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu virus from close contact with infected birds but scientists fear that it could mutate into a version that spreads from person to person, raising the risk of wider outbreaks or even a global pandemic. The World Health Organisation said that...

The type of bird flu found in turkeys on a Suffolk farm is the virulent H5N1 strain, according to government vets. The virus was discovered at Redgrave Park Farm near Diss, where all 6,500 birds are being slaughtered. A 3km protection zone and a 10km surveillance zone have been set up and the farm is co-operating with vets.......

It's now leaking out that there was more going on than met the eye at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Summit in Montebello, Canada, in August. The three amigos - President George W. Bush, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Mexican President Felipe Calderon - finalized and released the "North American Plan for Avian & Pandemic Influenza." The "Plan" - that's what they call it, with a capital P - is to use the excuse of a major flu epidemic to shift powers from U.S. legislatures to unelected, unaccountable "North American" bureaucrats. This idea was launched on Sept. 14, 2005,...

ERLANGEN, Germany (AFP) - German authorities will destroy 160,000 poultry at a Bavarian farm following the discovery there of the highly pathogenic strain of H5N1 bird flu, local authorities said Saturday. Tests on a number of ducks from the farm at Wachenroth near the southern city of Erlangen, 200 kilometres (120 miles) north of Munich, confirmed the strain, local authority spokeswoman Annika Fritzsche told AFP. Investigations will continue to determine how the virus -- which in its highly pathogenic strain can also infect humans, sometimes fatally -- entered the farm, Fritzsche said. It was detected in three young ducks from...

NEW DELHI — India's government on Thursday confirmed an outbreak of H5N1-strain bird flu at a poultry farm in the northeastern state of Manipur, marking the country's first reported outbreak since February last year. Health officials said the highly virulent H5NI strain, which can infect humans, was detected in samples taken from birds that had died suddenly at the farm in Chingmeirong village on the outskirts of Imphal, capital of the insurgency-hit state that borders Myanmar.

Potentially lethal H5N1 bird flu resurfaces in Europe 27 Jun, 2007 l 1751 hrs PRAGUE: A bird flu scare in Central Europe was spreading on Wednesday as Czech authorities said the H5N1 virus potentially lethal to humans had been found in a flock of chickens after discoveries among wild birds in Germany. The presence of H5N1 bird flu was confirmed on a poultry farm near the village of Norin, just four kilometers (2.5 miles) from a farm where some 6,000 turkeys were slaughtered last week after the deadly virus was detected there. The farm in Tisova was the first incidence...

CAIRO - A third Egyptian child has tested positive for the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, bringing the number of human cases in Egypt to 32, state news agency MENA said on Saturday. An official with the health ministry said the 4-year-old girl came from Qalyoubia province, north of Cairo, MENA said. Earlier, the health ministry said a 4-year-old boy from Qena province, around 670 kilometers (416 miles) south of Cairo, and a 7-year-old boy from Sohag province, around 470 kilometers south of Cairo, had been infected with bird flu. The 4-year-old girl was admitted to hospital on Friday, MENA...

Bird flu found on British farm By Bonnie Malkin and agencies Last Updated: 5:35pm GMT 03/02/2007 Government vets are investigating an outbreak of bird flu at a poultry farm after thousands of turkeys died. Police have cordoned off the farm Experts were called to a Bernard Matthews site at Holton near Halesworth, Suffolk, late on Thursday following the outbreak of an "unexplained" illness. Around 2,600 turkeys are thought to have died from the virus. The Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said preliminary tests had confirmed a bird flu outbreak. Later, the EU Commission confirmed the potentially deadly...

KUWAIT CITY: Kuwait has confirmed 20 cases of the deadly bird flu in falcons, chickens and turkeys, a spokesman for the Health Ministry said Sunday. Ahmed al-Shatti said there were no human cases and an emergency plan has been launched. He said the cases were found at the Kuwait Zoo, farms and a clinic for falcons. The zoo and bird markets will be closed temporarily, and exports and imports of birds are being halted, he said. Kuwait has established a control room that operates around the clock to monitor and coordinate efforts to combat the disease, said al-Shatti, who is...

February 18, 2007 -- Russian officials took steps to prevent the spread of bird flu as they investigated new reports of birds dying near Moscow. AP cited Aleksei Alekseyenko, spokesman for the federal agricultural oversight agency Rosselkhoznadzor, as saying that four separate incidents of birds dying could be traced to single market located outside the city. Health workers leaving a quarantine zone in the village of Babenki, 50 kilometers from Moscow (epa) The market in question has been closed as investigators try to determine where it obtained the birds it was selling. Deadly Strain The news came a day after...

HOLTON, England -- Britain scrambled to contain its first outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu in domestic poultry yesterday after the virus was found at a farm run by Europe's biggest turkey producer. About 2,500 turkeys have died since Thursday at the Bernard Matthews farm near Lowestoft in eastern England. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said all 159,000 turkeys on the farm would be culled. "We're in new territory," National Farmers' Union Poultry Board Chairman Charles Bourns said. "We've every confidence in DEFRA, but until we know how this disease arrived,...

Weybridge, UK, 29 Jan. (AKI) - The European Union has confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has been found on a farm in Hungary - the first infection in Europe since the disease was reported last August. Tests at the EU's approved laboratory in Weybridge, south of London, backed up the results announced by Hungary's authorities last week. A flock of 3,000 geese where the outbreak of the highly virulent H5N1 was reported last Thursday on a farm near Szentes in the southeastern Hungarian county of Csongrad has been destroyed. Authorities found the H5N1 bird flu strain...

OKAYAMA (Kyodo) The agriculture ministry announced Saturday that bird flu is suspected in the deaths of 22 chickens at a poultry farm in Takahashi, Okayama Prefecture. Workers bury bags of slaughtered chickens from the Sato Broiler farm at a mountain near the farm in Hyuga, Miyazaki Prefecture, on Saturday. KYODO PHOTO The word came just hours after the ministry confirmed that the deadly H5N1 strain was detected in the second outbreak of bird flu this month in Miyazaki Prefecture. The farm in Takahashi raises around 12,000 chickens. Two died Friday and 20 died Saturday, according to the ministry. It is...

HONG KONG -- Although fears of an avian-flu pandemic among humans have subsided, experts warn that the risk hasn't vanished. Less than a year ago, flocks of poultry, swans and wild birds were contracting the disease in Europe and Africa. The spread into the U.S. bird population seemed just a matter of time, and some people rushed to stockpile antiviral drugs. It has been relatively quiet since then, and some of the fears now seem overblown. Still, evidence continues to trickle in that the virus hasn't gone away. Birds continue to die from the disease in countries such as Vietnam...

Mekong Delta's bird flu cases force urgent action HCM CITY — The latest outbreak of bird flu in Soc Trang province has authorities on the alert in the Mekong River Delta, forcing the region to take drastic measures to prevent the epidemic from spreading to other provinces. The provincial authorities reported a bird flu epidemic on Sunday after samples were taken from the dead ducks in My Huong Commune, My Tu District had tested positive for the lethal virus. Since the recurrence of bird flu virus in early December in the Mekong Delta, the virus has now hit seven provinces,...

MIYAZAKI -- The farm ministry ordered nationwide checks of poultry farms Friday after about 750 chickens died earlier this week at a farm in the town of Kiyotake, Miyazaki Prefecture. The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry and the Miyazaki Prefectural Government said late Thursday night that a highly pathogenic bird flu is suspected as the cause of the deaths. This is the first domestic bird-flu outbreak since June 2005, when the H5N2 strain spread to 40 farms in Ibaraki Prefecture, forcing 5.7 million chickens to be culled, the agriculture ministry said. The ministry said the presence of the bird-flu virus...

Publication permit No. 14/GP-BC, granted by Press Department, Vietnam Ministry of Culture and Information. Hot News:  Last Updated: Tuesday, January 2, 2007 12:13:39 Vietnam (GMT+07) Bird flu raging in Vietnam's Mekong delta More poultry deaths and infected sites have been reported in Vietnam's Hau Giang, Ca Mau and Bac Lieu provinces in the last two days. Nguyen Hien Trung, head of Hau Giang's animal health department, said a new site had been identified in Vi Thuy district yesterday after a dead bird had tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus strain. A total of three communes in two districts had...

Avian flu strikes back in Vietnam Saturday 30th of December 2006 02:3 On December 23, the family comprising of 36-year old woman and her three children of age range from three to thirteen, ate one ill chicken of the four and fell ill. They were admitted with the symptoms of bird flu in Nam Can Hospital of Ca Mau province this past week. According to the doctor Ho Van Van at the hospital, they had fever, coughing, decreased white blood cells and damaged lungs. He also added that the hospital is testing the swab samples from the patients for the...

Urgent measures against new bird flu outbreak the virus H5N1 has attacked many fowl: killing 600 chickens and 2,100 ducks in Khanh Binh and Khanh Hai communes, Tran Van Thoi district, Ca Mau province from December 11 â€" 20, 2006. The epidemic has spread to Vinh Binh commune, Hoa Binh district, Bac Lieu province. According to Ms. Chau Thi Kim Tuyen, Vice Head of the Ca Mau province Department of Veterinary Inspection, many local residents killed diseased poultry and threw the corpses into Hiep Hoa canal, which made the epidemic spread more rapidly among poultry breeding farms in Khanh Binh...

Bird flu spreads in Vietnam 22/12/2006 12:31  - (SA)   Bird flu hits Vietnam poultry Poultry culled to curb bird flu Hanoi - Authorities in Vietnam said on Friday that bird flu had spread in two provinces in the southern Mekong delta, where massive outbreaks were first reported early this week. Additional cases of the deadly H5N1 virus were detected in Ca Mau and Bac Lieu provinces, with nearly 8 300 poultry dead or culled, the national animal health department said on its website. The two provinces were the first to report major outbreaks of bird flu in the communist nation within the past...

The Chicken Littles Were Wrong The bird flu threat flew the coop. by Michael Fumento 12/25/2006, Volume 012, Issue 15 It's that time of year again--avian flu panic season. As the weather turns colder in the northern hemisphere and the flu starts making its annual rounds, the media and their anointed health experts are chirping and squawking once again about how we could be blindsided by a pandemic that some have estimated could kill a billion persons worldwide. New books like The Coming Avian Flu Pandemic join last year's The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of Avian...

Dec. 10, 2006, 11:50AMExperts ponder bird flu's disappearance By MARIA CHENG AP Medical Writer © 2006 The Associated PressWomen clean chickens to prepare them for a local hotel, in an outdoor market in Bamako, Mali Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006. Bird flu experts from across the globe are gathering Wednesday in this West African nation to mobilize support, with an estimated US$1.5 billion (euro 1.1 billion) funding needed over the next several years to fight a deadly strain of bird flu experts fear could start a human pandemic, the World Bank says. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) REBECCA BLACKWELL: AP LONDON — Earlier...

Bird flu virus 'still smoldering,' U.S. expert says POSTED: 4:05 p.m. EST, December 6, 2006 By Caleb Hellerman CNNFirdaus Baskara, 8, of suburban Jakarta, Indonesia, survived bird flu. He's believed to have contracted the illness from his aunt. A year ago, headlines were screaming about a looming disaster: the rapid spread of bird flu across two-thirds of the globe. The H5N1 strain of the virus was killing more than half its human victims. Experts were urging the government to stockpile medicine and experimental vaccines. Dr. Robert Webster, whose vaccine the U.S. government plans to use in case of an outbreak,...

Va. hunters' game tested for avian flu November 27, 2006 RICHMOND, Va. -- Waterfowl hunters in Virginia are being enlisted in the fight against avian flu. Along eastern Virginia's waterways, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is scouting out hunters at wildlife management areas, popular hunting spots and boat ramps. There, some of them are being asked to allow a swab of their bagged game to test for the highly pathogenic version of H5N1 avian flu, according to Bob Ellis, assistant director of the department's wildlife division. Species being sampled include tundra swan, mute swan, snow goose, Atlantic brant and...

South Korea to kill cats and dogs over bird flu fears South Korea plans to kill cats and dogs to try to prevent the spread of bird flu after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 virus at a chicken farm last week, officials said today. Animal health experts, however, suggested it was "a bit of an extreme measure" when there was no definitive scientific evidence to suggest that cats or dogs could pass the virus to humans. Quarantine officials have already killed 125,000 chickens within a 1,650-foot radius of the outbreak site in Iksan, about 155 miles south of Seoul,...

— Vietnam produces human H5N1 vaccine in labs. The Nha Trang Institute of Vaccines and Biological Products in the central Khanh Hoa province of Vietnam has announced that it has successfully produced 5,000 doses of a H5N1 vaccine for humans from chicken embryos. The vaccine gave similar results after being tested on white mice, guinea−pig and cockerels. The quality was tested against the World Health Organization's standards. Samples taken from the vaccinated animals 10 days after the second dose, showed that the vaccine produced the highest haemagglutinin antibody levels. These vaccines have been sent to the National Institute of Verification...

World unprepared for bird flu pandemic, warns expert By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 1:29am GMT 18/11/2006Vaccines are made by growing viruses in hen eggs" The world is unprepared for a bird-flu pandemic because it has not carried out enough research to create an effective vaccine, a leading specialist told The Daily Telegraph yesterday. For "at least one year" the global population would be vulnerable when the virus mutates into a super-flu that can spread among people, said Prof Albert Osterhaus, of Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam, a world authority on viruses. "No country is sufficiently prepared at the moment,"...

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...

The So-Called "Bird Flu": Why is Concern So High?November 13, 2006 Seasonal (annual) flu is the flu that comes every year starting in the late fall and ending in the spring. There are a number of subtypes of this influenza virus circulating around the world, which is why the flu vaccines are a bit different each year. Most people have built up some immunity from exposure over the years. Although the seasonal flu is not usually a threat to healthy adults, it still kills some 36,000 Americans every year. Pandemic flu is a global disease outbreak. An influenza pandemic occurs...

Three million body bags may be stockpiled in disaster plans Last Updated: 1:17am GMT 06/11/2006 Secret plans to stockpile millions of body bags to be used in the event of a flu pandemic, terrorist attack or other disaster are being considered by the Government and health experts, according to a senior minister. The proposals reflect mounting concern at the lack of space to store bodies in morgues and bury them in the event of mass deaths. A senior member of the Government involved in policy planning for a flu pandemic told The Daily Telegraph that "various scenarios" involving hundreds of...

Deadly bird flu not forgotten by U.S health officials By Tony Pugh McClatchy Newspapers (MCT) WASHINGTON - Less than a year ago, Americans could barely turn on the television, surf the Internet or pick up a newspaper without finding a doomsday story about deadly avian flu. By last November, President Bush had asked Congress for $7.1 billion to help develop a vaccine, stockpile antiviral medications and fund state preparations for a possible pandemic. Now, with the disease still centered in Asia and the failure of migratory birds to spread the illness to Europe and North America, the H5N1 virus has...

An experiment to reconstruct the deadly 1918 flu virus has given a new insight into how the infection took hold. Scientists discovered a severe immune system reaction was triggered when mice were infected with the recreated virus. The US team believe the extreme immune response could have provoked the body to begin killing its own cells, making the flu even deadlier. The study, published in Nature, may aid the hunt for new treatments. The 1918 pandemic took about 50 million lives. The devastating infection, which is thought to have originated in birds, left young adults worst hit. Scientists in the...

See for example this thread first. We were to be shipped some bird flu (Chinese samples--NOW what do we do?) It shows we have "pluck" in the face of bad luck Let's hope that we don't catch it too!

AP MEDICAL WRITER ATLANTA -- U.S. health officials say they have worked out a "lapse in communications" that was delaying China from shipping bird flu virus samples to the United States. This week, a Chinese Agriculture Ministry official acknowledged delays in shipping requested samples of bird flu virus to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The delays were attributable to the CDC, which had not ironed out import procedures, the official said. Sharing of virus information and samples has been a touchy subject for China, which came under criticism for being slow and reluctant to release data on...