Dozens In Mexican City Ill With Suspected Avian Flu
September 30, 2007
Dozens of people in a Mexican city are gravely ill with what is being treated as a possible outbreak of avian flu, according to a new report from a Spanish-language website.
According to El Universal, authorities in a neighborhood in Guanajuato say 45 patients have been given medical attention at the area’s hospital after they reported symptoms including extreme headaches, stomachaches, vomiting and diarrhea.
The cases have developed over the last two weeks and “feel [like] death,” according to Silvia Villalobos, one of the victims who spoke to El Universal correspondent Xochitl Alvarez in Spanish.
Jelly Nasal Spray Flu Vaccine Shows Promise
September 28, 2007
It is not the same as jellied pig’s trotters, but a jelly nose has the ‘exciting potential’ to be the next weapon in the arsenal against pandemic flu.
Researchers at Texas A&M University, in conjunction with DelSite Biotechnologies, are working on a pandemic flu vaccine based on a powder nasal spray that forms a jelly in the nose.
While still at animal trial level, studies have so far shown the jelly substance that forms in the nose after spraying keeps the vaccine antigen in the nasal passage for longer giving the immune system a greater and prolonged stimulus.
“When this powder vaccine is puffed into the nose, it forms a jelly-like substance that clings to the inside of the nose and is absorbed into the body much more effectively. It stays longer and it has more time to do its work,” Texas A&M University College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences pathobiology professor Dr Ian Tizard said.
The vaccine is formulated using an undisclosed carbohydrate from the Aloe vera plant which is mixed with the vaccine component and dried together to form a powder.
On contact with the moisture of the nasal passage, the powder is reconstituted; dissolving the product and interacting with the carbohydrate to form a jelly.
“This powder form is more effective than a liquid spray because the nose tends to clear liquid sprays out, while the powder turns into a sticky gel and can be a much more potent vaccine,” Tizard said.
One or two puffs into the nose was all that was needed to get results. The length of time the jelly would stay in a human nose was currently unknown.
The unique Aloe vera carbohydrate was yet to be approved as an excipient in the vaccine, but meetings with authorities were expected next month to discuss the ingredient, Tizard told US-PharmaTechnologist.com.
The carbohydrate is extracted from the leaves of the Aloe vera through a number of extraction steps thereby removing the other beneficially therapeutic compounds the plant is famous for.
“There is no other evidence the carbohydrate has any other effect other than reducing clearance from the nose,” Tizard said.
Besides being retained in the nose for longer in the jelly form, the vaccine had other benefits Tizard said, including being a needle-free vaccine, being formulated as a dry powder which was more stable and could be stored for longer, and showing “significant dose sparing relative to other intranasal vaccines” without the use of an adjuvant.
The vaccine was currently being developed for pandemic bird flu, but Tizard said the technology could work to develop vaccines for other diseases.
“The plan was to try this first as a vaccine for bird flu in humans because there was an immediate concern there, and there still is the possibility that a widespread bird flu epidemic could break out somewhere in the world. But there is no reason to think this method of vaccine treatment would not work for many other diseases too. We think it’s an exciting breakthrough that has great potential,” Tizard said.
While the development of the vaccine was still early, tests on humans were expected to begin next year.
MedImmune has had its liquid nasal spray flu vaccine, FluMist, on the market since 2003, which was the first needle-free flu vaccine available on the market, and the company is developing a next generation nasal mist flu vaccine.
The nose jelly project is funded in part by a $6m grant from the National Institutes of Health awarded to DelSite Biotechnologies in conjunction with the Texas A&M teams.
Scientist Have Developed Portable Bird Flu Detector
September 28, 2007
Scientists have revealed a portable bird flu detector that can spot the deadly H5N1 virus in less than 30 minutes.
The palm-sized device uses throat swabs or stool samples from humans and poultry.
Dr Masafumi Inoue, one of the researchers from the Singapore-based Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, said it could help fight an outbreak by providing early warnings.
Current bird flu tests take about three to four hours to complete and must be conducted in a laboratory, he said.
The device could potentially be 40 to 100 times cheaper than current bird flu detection tests, said Dr Inoue. It can also be adapted to test for severe acute respiratory syndrome, HIV and hepatitis B.
Research on the testing tool was published in an advance online edition of the journal Nature Medicine.
“It may well be the answer to all our prayers, but we don’t know anything about it yet,” said Peter Cordingley, spokesman for the World Health Organisation’s Western Pacific region.
Avian influenza has killed at least 200 people worldwide, but remains hard for people to catch. Experts fear it could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, potentially sparking a pandemic.
Flu Pandemic Overdue
September 28, 2007
The catastrophic impacts of a long-lasting pandemic are not only likely to happen, but overdue, and will likely exceed what most corporate and governmental leaders have imagined, or are prepared for, says a report from Marsh and The Albright Group.
The scientific consensus is that an avian flu pandemic could sicken 20% of the world’s population, result in absenteeism of 40% of the global workforce, and kill tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people, a release from Marsh says.
Researchers also said that outbreaks will likely move along modern transportation and distribution chains, with transportation hubs being especially vulnerable.
“We found very few companies adequately prepared to protect their people or ensure the continuity of their business in the event of a pandemic,” John Merkovsky, president of Marsh’s risk consulting unit, said in a statement.
Marsh officials say discussions with global companies reveal the majority of them believe it’s unlikely that a pandemic could strike their operations, the release says, adding that one in four businesses in Asia has a plan to keep operating when a pandemic happens.“But the fallacy in this thinking is found in a narrow view that does not take into account the global interdependence of today’s economy,” the statement says.
“Said differently, a pandemic outbreak in Dubai could easily have far-reaching effects in Dublin and Dallas.”
U.S. Expected To See Bird-flu Pandemic Soon
September 28, 2007
A bird-flu pandemic likely will reach U.S. shores in the next decade, Dr. Kristy Bradley, deputy state epidemiologist for the Oklahoma State Department of Health, said Tuesday.
“Prior to the last decade or so, the thought was the influenza from birds would be mild or just cause conjunctivitis in humans,” she said at the second annual Prevention Conference, being held through Wednesday at the Tulsa Marriott Southern Hills hotel, 1902 E. 71st St.
But “bells went off” in 1997 when 18 people in Hong Kong contracted bird flu and six died from it, Bradley said.
“Bird flu” refers to an influenza from a virus found chiefly in birds, but infections can occur in humans.
“We’ve been tracking H5N1 (a strain of bird flu) since 1997,” Bradley said. “It has continued to spread to parts of Africa and the Middle East and continues to cause a lot of problems in Asia.”
The questions are whether the U.S. should worry about a bird-flu pandemic and whether the nation is prepared to respond to a massive outbreak of the virus, she said.
“We do get a little more concerned about the H5N1 virus because it’s not behaving like any other bird flu we’ve seen,” Bradley said.
It has shown resistance to antiviral medications, and human-to-human transmission has been confirmed, she said.
“We always have that possibility we could have an imported case in our country,” she said.
Depending on its severity, a U.S. bird-flu pandemic could mean that 43 million to 100 million people would be infected and an estimated 89,000 to 207,000 people would die, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Between 314,000 and 733,000 Americans would be hospitalized, again depending on the severity of the outbreak, Bradley said.
“Hospitals would be stretched to the max,” she said.
The economic impact of a U.S. bird-flu pandemic is estimated at between $71 billion and $166 billion, Bradley said.
“That can seem pretty daunting,” she said.
Both the federal government and Oklahoma health authorities have plans in place to respond to such a crisis, Bradley said.
Vaccines typically are the first line of defense for a flu outbreak, although authorities are limited to speculation about which strain of virus will prompt an epidemic.
The U.S. has begun stockpiling 40 million doses — at two doses per person — of prepandemic H5N1 bird flu vaccine. Oklahoma is set to receive 20,000 doses of the vaccine, Bradley said.
After five years, the medication loses its effectiveness, so the doses must be thrown out and new ones brought in, she said.
“This is the hedging and the risks you take, because you cannot predict how effective it will be,” Bradley said.
State plans include prioritizing who will get the vaccine based on risk factors for complications, she said.
Any flu pandemic that hits the U.S. most likely would originate from a bird influenza, Bradley said.
“As you can see, it’s very much up in the air,” she said. “Nature generally has the upper hand.”
Deadly Bird Flu Can Pass From Mother To Fetus
September 28, 2007
The deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu can pass through the placenta of a pregnant woman to her unborn fetus, scientists reported Friday.
The highly pathogenic flu strain, which has killed 60 percent of humans infected, can also spread to organs other than the lungs in adults, including the intestines, raising concerns about how the disease might spread, according to a study published in the British journal The Lancet.
A team led by Jiang Gu of Beijing University studied post-mortem tissues of two adults — one man and a pregnant women — who had died of the disease.
Since it was first identified in 1997, H5N1 avian flu is known to have infected 328 people worldwide, killing 200, according to the World Health Organisation.
There have been 25 cases and 16 deaths in China, where the virus is thought to have first emerged on poultry farms in the southern province of Guangdong.
Almost all those who contracted the disease dealt extensively with infected fowl, though a few cases of human-to-human transmission have been reported as well.
Scientists fear the virus will mutate into a form that could spread easily among humans, unleashing a pandemic similar to the 1918 outbreak that killed at least 20 million people across the globe.
The researchers detected viral genetic material and antigens not only in the lungs, where the H5N1 strain was known to lodge, but also in the trachea, in disease-fighting T cells of the lymph node, and in brain neurons.
The doctors also found traces of the virus in the placenta, as well as in the lungs, immune cells and liver cells of the fetus.
Antigens are toxins that cause an immune reaction in the body, stimulating the production of antibodies.
This “vertical transmission” of the H5N1 virus from one part of the body to another and into the womb “warrants full investigation, since maternal infections with common human influenza virus are generally thought not to infect the fetus,” Gu said.
In humans, H5N1 mainly affects the lower respiratory tract, crippling the lungs ability to take in oxygen and causing respiratory failure. It also causes diarrhoea in 70 percent of patients.
The fact that viral genetic material was found in the intestine and in faecal samples “suggest viral replication occurred in the intestine,” noted pathologists Wai Fu Ng and Ka Fai To of Princess Margaret Hospital in Hong Kong.
“This finding could have important implications for infection control,” they said.
The pathologists cautioned that laboratory experiments are needed to confirm Gu’s conclusion that the virus is able to replicate outside of the lungs.
Bird Flu Strain Found On Saskatchewan Farm
September 28, 2007
Canadian veterinary officials said on Thursday they found the H7N3 strain of avian influenza on a Saskatchewan chicken farm, but noted the virus was not the deadly strain that scientists fear could cause the next flu pandemic.
“We are not dealing with the H5N1 virus that has been linked to human illness in Asia and other parts of the world,” said Sandra Stephens, a veterinarian with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
The H7N3 strain is not normally associated with human illness, the CFIA said.
The finding had little impact on livestock and grain markets. Most Canadian poultry is produced for the domestic market, and Saskatchewan, known for its large expanses of grain fields, accounts for only a small fraction of the output.
“It is a mild strain. It doesn’t appear to be a big deal,” said Paul Aho, an industry consultant with Poultry Perspective.
Canada informed the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) about the case, as well as the United States and European Union, which import some Canadian poultry products.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture said it would ban shipments of poultry from Saskatchewan, although it has not imported poultry from the province since 2005.
“We will continue to monitor the situation closely,” said John Clifford, the USDA’s chief veterinarian.
The H7N3 strain is routinely found in a low-pathogenic form in wild ducks in North America, said Jim Clark, a senior official with the CFIA. The disease can quickly mutate into a high-pathogenic form in commercial poultry flocks, he said.
“There is a vast and total difference between an H5 and an H7 subtype,” Clark said in an interview.
The CFIA quarantined the farm, located northwest of the provincial capital of Regina, and will destroy its flock of 45,000 chickens.
Ebola Outbreak In Congo 100 Dead
September 11, 2007
Lab results confirm a deadly illness outbreak in southeastern Congo as Ebola fever, officials said Monday.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and another lab in Gabon confirmed the disease as a hemorrhagic fever, and specifically as Ebola, Health Minister Makwenge Kaput said on national television.
More than 100 people have died of illness in the affected region, an area called Mweka, since late August.
Makwenge did not provide further details or say if the outbreak had since been contained.
Medical inspectors had previously said that people began dying after high-profile funerals of two village chiefs in the region where relatives usually wash the bodies of the deceased by hand.
In the past, Congo has seen large outbreaks of Marburg and Ebola, both hemorrhagic fevers caused by viruses that, in severe cases, attack the central nervous system and cause bleeding from the eyes, ears and other parts of the body.
By the end of August, four villages had been affected and 217 people had come down with the illness, including 103 who died. About 140,000 people live in the Mweka area.
Congo’s last major Ebola outbreak struck in Kikwit in 1995, killing 245 people. Kikwit is about 300 kilometers (185 miles) from the site of the current purported outbreak.
Bird Flu Spreads In Germany
September 9, 2007
Bird flu continues to spread in Germany after authorities identified new cases in two more duck farms, local reports said Friday.
German authorities have ordered to kill 205,000 ducks after bird flu was found on two duck farms near the town of Nittenau in the southern state of Bavaria, said German news agency DPA.
“Clear evidence” of the bird flu virus was found, said the report, citing German health officials.
Two weeks ago, dead ducks from the farm in Wachenroth in Bavaria’s Erlangen-Hoechstadt area have been tested positive for the deadly H5N1 virus strain, which experts fear may transfer to humans.
Several cases of the deadly H5N1 strain in wild birds has been identified in the German states of Bavaria and Sachsen in June.
According to the World Health Organization, 195 people globaly, mostly in Asia, have died from the H5N1 virus.
