Bird flu virus mutates into a strain more infectious to humans
The changes, which only affect the virus circulating in Europe and Africa, are worrying although they have not yet transformed it into a pandemic strain, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who led the research, said.
The outbreak of avian influenza caused by the lethal virus H5N1 began in Asia in 2003 and spread around the world, leading to the slaughter of hundreds of millions of birds.
More than 30 countries have reported outbreaks in the last year, mostly in wild birds such as swans. The virus has infected 329 people since 2003, of whom 201 have died, according to the World Health Organisation.
Governments have responded to the threat by stockpiling millions of doses of the anti-flu drug, Tamiflu, and preparing emergency plans for dealing with a pandemic.
In the UK, the disease broke out on a Bernard Matthews turkey farm in Suffolk and more than 100,000 poultry were culled after the virus was apparently imported from Hungary. But there have been no human cases in the UK or Europe.
Writing in the Public Library of Science journal, PLoS Pathogens, Dr Kawaoka and colleagues say recent samples of virus taken from birds in Europe and Africa all carry the mutation, which makes the virus more likely to grow in the nose and throat of humans.
“I don’t like to scare the public, because they cannot do very much,” Dr Kawaoka tolds the Reuters news agency. “But at the same time it is important to the scientific community to understand what is happening.”
Humans have a lower body temperature than birds and the avian virus finds it difficult to grow in the cooler conditions of the human throat. The mutated virus is better adapted to these cooler conditions, making transmission more likely.
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