Possible Human Cases of Bird Flu Probed

[RedEarth]

Medical sleuths puzzling over three related bird flu cases in Thailand last fall now strongly believe that two women who cared for a sick child both caught the virus from the girl.

This is not the first evidence of human-to-human transmission of the virus, which has killed more than three dozen people in Thailand and Vietnam since the outbreak last year. In 1997, scientists believe bird flu also spread between people in rare cases in Hong Kong.

Also, last week, Vietnamese officials were investigating another suspected person-to-person bird flu case involving two brothers in Hanoi.

People normally catch bird flu from infected birds, usually chickens and ducks. International health experts are not worried about limited person-to-person transmission. Their biggest fear is a mutation of the virus into a form that passes easily between people, which could lead to a deadly flu pandemic. So far, there is no evidence the virus is changing into a more dangerous form.

In a study, an international team of scientists led by the Public Health Ministry in Thailand believed that an 11-year-old Thai girl became ill with the virus last fall and probably passed it on to her mother and aunt. The girl and the mother died 12 days apart. The aunt survived

http://askapnews.myway.com/article/20050124/D87QGHOG0.html

[Warpy]

1. One of the vaccine manufacturers

has claimed to have made a prototype vaccine for the avian flu strain now so problematic. The problem is that by the time it mutates to a form suitable for a pandemmic, the vaccine will probably be obsolete.

[Avalux]

2. A hybridization of bird flu and influenza -

a person who becomes infected simultaneously with both bird and ordinary human flu would be the vector for a deadly global pandemic. The question isn't if it will happen, but when. No vaccine.

[Minstrel Boy]

3. New England Journal of Medicine: Probable Person-to-Person Transmission

of Avian Influenza A

Conclusions: Disease in the mother and aunt probably resulted from person-to-person transmission of this lethal avian influenzavirus during unprotected exposure to the critically ill index patient.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/NEJMoa044021

Who's up for a pandemic?