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Breaking News about the Bird Flu Pandemic
Indians trace jump of bird flu virus to humans
Close on the heels of the bird flu outbreak in Bengal, an Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) team led by Indian-born Ram Sasisekharan has explained just how bird flu spread to humans in 1918, leading to a pandemic that killed 50-100 million people worldwide.
Scientists fear the emergence of a new bird flu strain that could jump easily from birds to humans — potentially unleashing a pandemic.
Sasisekharan’s team reports in the February 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that two mutations in the 1918 bird flu virus played a key role in transmitting it to humans.
The mutations developed on a surface molecule called hemagglutinin (HA), allowing it to infect humans, by binding tightly to the human upper respiratory tract.
“These two HA mutations dramatically change the virus’s ability to bind with receptors on the human respiratory tract,” Ram Sasisekharan, an IISc alumnus and currently MIT’s Underwood Prescott Professor of Biological Engineering and Health Sciences and Technology, told HT.
Last month, Sasisekharan’s team had reported in Nature Biotechnology that flu viruses infect humans only if they match the shape of umbrella-shaped sugar receptors found on the human respiratory tract.
In the current study, funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, six out of the seven researchers are NRIs.
The findings could aid researchers in monitoring mutations in the bird flu strains in India. “We now know what to look for. The latest findings will aid the monitoring of the evolution of the bird flu virus leading to its human adaptation,” says Sasisekharan.
Bird flu cannot be taken casually -
A BIRD flu epidemic like situation is now sweeping Bangladesh. Notwithstanding reassuring statements to play down the grave health threat from it by the official spokesman, the reality is that Bangladesh is now a dangerously bird flu afflicted country. It would be only irresponsibility of the highest order and self-defeating not to recognise this grim reality. Only such recognition will create the ground for tackling it with the seriousness it deserves. A government spokesman said that that Bangladesh is still not a worst case of the disease like neighbouring West Bengal. But the flue has been detected in 37 districts of the country and hundreds of thousands of poultry birds have been culled. The deadly virus of bird flu has been detected in the capital city and other major towns. Thus it has become like an epidemic in Bangladesh also that needs to be tackled on a war footing in the interest of public health. Read More
'Mysterious' bird flu baffles Indonesian scientists - 02/05/07
JAKARTA (AFP) — Indonesian scientists and officials said they were baffled by the "mysterious" behaviour of the bird flu virus here, which has already claimed nine lives this year in the world's worst-hit nation.
Indonesia has reported 126 cases of H5N1 bird flu, 103 of them fatal, since 2005. This year's victims have all come from the capital Jakarta and its satellite cities.
Officials from the ministry of agriculture's bird flu control unit told a media briefing that the risk factors for human infection remained unclear after studies were conducted around victims' homes.
"In some of the cases we found the virus in the water and chickens, but in many other cases the studies showed no signs of the virus in the surroundings," said the unit's Tjahjani Widjastuti at the briefing late Tuesday.
The usual mode of transmission of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu is directly from an infected bird -- typically poultry -- to humans. Read More
Woman in China's Guangdong has suspected bird flu 02/25/08
Pakistan finds new bird flu outbreak near southern city of Karachi 02/24/08
Bird flu outbreak confirmed in Tibet 02/18/08
China reports 18th human bird-flu death 02/17/08
Bird flu kills another Indonesian boy 02/16/08
Turkey confirms bird flu in villages in northwest - 02/06/08
Coming soon, new strains of influenza - 02/10/08
Bird flu spreads to urban Bangladesh, officials say 02/06/08
Hong Kong closes bird sanctuary for 3 weeks after suspected bird flu death nearby 02/06/08
Vietnam alert to bird flu outbreaks among fowls, humans 02/05/08
India culls 3.4 million birds but fails to contain avian flu outbreak 02/05/08
Education against bird flu 02/05/08
Woman's Death Brings Indonesian Bird Flu Toll to 103 02/04/08
Saudi Arabia on high alert over bird flu 01/29/08
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Cures/Preventions News Updates
Russian research center testing human bird flu vaccine - 02/08/08
The FINANCIAL -- According to RIA Novosti, a research center in Siberia is conducting the second phase of clinical trials for a human vaccine against the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, the center's deputy director said on February 7.
Bird flu has killed over 200 people worldwide since it was first registered in Asia in 2003. Experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among people, sparking a worldwide pandemic.
"Clinical trials for a human vaccine against bird flu are being carried out to test its possible side effects and immunological potency," said Alexander Sergeyev of the Vektor center based in Novosibirsk. The tests should be completed by "mid-2008." Read More
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Australian researchers cracking the code of bird flu time bomb 02/05/08
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/dn11941-human-antibodies-successfully-treat-bird-flu.html 05/29/07
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