Researchers found a possible case of human-to-human transmission of bird flu in China.
The finding provides acceptance to the idea that there’s a genetic element to human-to-human transmission of this potentially harmful virus, a new study suggests.
The finding follows reports of probable human-to-human transmission of the H5N1 bird flu virus in Pakistan.
As stated in the background information for the new study, published online Tuesday in The Lancet, there have been 376 reported cases of infection with H5N1 virus around the world as of April 2, with 238 deaths since November 2003.
The H5N1 virus has infected poultry in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa and Europe and caused the defunctness of millions of birds. The apprehension among health officials is that the virus will change and obtain the ability to skip easily among humans and may cause millions of deaths. Dissimilar to the seasonal flu, humans have no defense to bird flu.
According to the Lancet report, a father and son in Nanjing, China were diagnosed within one week of each other as being infected with H5N1 in December 2007. Researchers from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing made field and laboratory tests of both men including 91 people who had close contact with them.
The H5N1 viruses sampled from the father and the son were almost genetically the same.
The father got antiviral treatment as well as plasma from an individual who had been vaccinated against the virus as part of a vaccine trial. The son was diagnosed too late to receive suitable cure. All other 91 exposed contacts, including the son’s girlfriend and mother, found negative for H5N1.
Amusingly, no outbreaks of H5N1 in poultry were identified in Nanjing, a city in eastern China, before or after these two cases.
As stated by the study authors, more than 90 percent of H5N1 bunches in humans have happened in blood-related family members. And, experts said, this latest case provides no grounds for alarm.
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