Scientific Progress Against Bird Flu
This last week has been a heady time for the science of avian influenza. As documented by , a report in the journal Nature, the H5N1 bird flu virus has mutated again in Turkey in ways that could make it easier to infect humans. Despite this, the death rate from the virus fell dramatically in the recent Turkish outbreak, from over 50% lethality to about 20%. The lower rate seems to be due to earlier detection and treatment. At the same time, scientists unraveling the genetic code of bird flu viruses have discovered a new clue that may help explain why the notorious H5N1 strain is so deadly. They have deciphered how the H5N1 virus, and in fact all influenza A viruses replicate inside cells. This could which could help to speed up the development of new drugs to avert a pandemic or treat those affected. As important as these developments are, they are potentially dwarfed by a report in Journal of Virology. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh may have come up with a simple solution to a possible pandemic: immunize all the chickens, like China is attempting to do. They’ve developed a vaccine that completely protects chickens from the H5N1 avian flu virus and, they believe, it might be an “economically advantageous” way to stop the spread of the disease. If they’re wrong, they have a backup plan: use the same vaccine on the human population.
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