Bird flu strain infects human for 1st time
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LONDON (AP) -- A strain of bird flu that scientists thought
could not infect people has shown up in a Taiwanese woman, a nasty
surprise that shows scientists must do more to spot worrisome flu
strains before they ignite a global outbreak, doctors say.
On
a more hopeful front, two pharmaceuticals separately reported
encouraging results from human tests of a possible vaccine against a
different type of bird flu that has been spreading in China since first
being identified last spring, which is feared to have pandemic
potential.
The woman, 20, was hospitalized in
May with a lung infection. After being treated with Tamiflu and
antibiotics, she was released. One of her throat swabs was sent to the
Taiwan Centres for Disease Control. Experts there identified it as the
H6N1 bird flu, widely circulating in chickens on the island.
The
patient, who was not identified, worked in a deli and had no known
connection to live birds. Investigators couldn't figure out how she was
infected. But they noted several of her close family and friends also
developed flu-like symptoms after spending time with her, though none
tested positive for H6N1. The research was published online Thursday in
the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine.
Since
the H5N1 bird flu strain first broke out in southern China in 1996,
public health officials have been nervously monitoring its progress - it
has so far killed more than 600 people, mostly in Asia. Several other
bird flu strains, including H7N9, which was first identified in China in
April, have also caused concern but none has so far mutated into a form
able to spread easily among people.
"The
question again is what would it take for these viruses to evolve into a
pandemic strain?" wrote Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the National
Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, in a
commentary accompanying the new report.
She
said it was worrying that scientists had no early warning signals that
such new bird flus could be a problem until humans fell ill. Scientists
often monitor birds to see which viruses are killing them, in an attempt
to guess which flu strains might be troublesome for humans - but
neither H6N1 nor H7N9 make birds very sick.
Koopmans
called for increased surveillance of animal flu viruses and more
research into predicting which viruses might cause a global crisis.
"We can surely do better than to have human beings as sentinels," she wrote.
The
vaccine news is on the H7N9 bird flu that has infected at least 137
people and killed at least 45 since last spring. Scientists from Novavax
Inc., a Gaithersburg, Maryland, company, say tests on 284 people
suggest that after two shots of the vaccine, most made antibodies at a
level that usually confers protection.
"They
gave a third of the usual dose and yet had antibodies in over 80
percent," said an expert not connected with the work, Dr. Greg Poland of
the Mayo Clinic. "This is encouraging news. We've struggled to make
vaccines quickly enough against novel viruses," he said.
Results were published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine.
In
a separate announcement on Thursday, Switzerland-based Novartis
announced early tests on its H7N9 vaccine in 400 people showed 85
percent of them got a protective immune response after two doses. The
data has not yet been published.
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AP Chief Medical Writer Marilynn Marchione contributed to this report from Milwaukee.
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