Word: flu
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...influenza viruses--if you trace their lineage back far enough--got their start in birds, and the great majority stay there. But a handful of flu viruses adapt to the point that they can infect people. Each year the viruses capable of invading human cells mutate slightly in a way that leads to fresh outbreaks, but most people will still have a partial immunity because of previous exposure to similar viruses. Occasionally, though, a strain that had seemed to infect only birds will cross over more or less intact into humans. Because this new strain is so different from garden...
Virologists named the newest strain of avian flu H5N1, after two proteins (hemagglutinin and neuraminidase) that dot the surface of the virus like spikes on a mace. Since 2003, more than 100 people have become sick enough to come to the attention of health authorities, and at least 60 of them have died. So far, the vast majority have been infected through close contact with birds; human-to-human infection is still extremely rare. What gives health authorities nightmares is the possibility that the lethal H5N1 could mutate into a virus that is easily passed among humans...
...WHAT MAKES THIS PARTICULAR AVIAN FLU SO DEADLY...
...reasons that aren't entirely clear, the current H5N1 flu, unlike common flu, strikes deep within a patient's lungs, making it harder to spread to someone else and unusually lethal. Dr. Nguyen Hong Ha of Hanoi's Bach Mai Hospital has probably treated more cases than anyone else. Two-thirds of the deaths from bird flu since 2003 have occurred in Vietnam. Ha has watched the virus ravage the lungs of healthy young patients in a matter of days. He says the key to treatment is applying just the right amount of breathing assistance. Too much, and an H5N1...
...best course of action is not to treat this sort of flu but to prevent it. Preliminary results, released in August, of an experimental vaccine against bird flu suggest that a high-dose vaccine given in two shots a month apart would yield the best response. "What is sobering is how much was required, which puts an added pressure on vaccine production," says Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases...