Word: h5n1
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Boston A New Way to Fight the Flu Researchers have developed an antibody-based therapy for the flu virus that may help combat seasonal illnesses as well as more dangerous strains like the infamous H5N1 bird flu. The antibodies attach to a part of the virus that is less mutation-prone than the section targeted by current vaccines (which must be redeveloped every year to counter the virus' changes). Tests on mice produced promising results, although clinical trials with humans won't occur for a few years...
...also position themselves in the binding site of the cells themselves, blocking the virus at the receiving end too. One more advantage of this viral weak spot: it's the same on the vast majority of influenza strains circulating each year, including the ones responsible for the bird flu, H5N1. That makes this antibody approach potentially useful not only against seasonal flu but against pandemic strains as well. (See pictures of the bird...
...thing is certain about avian influenza: it's deadly. All three people who contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus in China last year died. In the first six weeks of 2009, eight people have come down with bird flu, and five have died. Another thing is that while the disease has yet to go pandemic, as many doctors fear it could, it remains worrisomely persistent. Every year since 2003, about 100 people in Asia, the Middle East and Africa contract the disease. Last year, in a rare exception, the number dropped below...
...China had reported no widespread outbreaks of the virus among bird populations, prompting concerns among some public-health experts that mainland health and veterinary authorities could be missing - or even concealing - the spread of the disease through poultry and wild birds. Hong Kong, where the first human cases of H5N1 infection were found in 1997, reported finding a dozen birds with the deadly strain of the virus earlier this year - a strong indication that the virus is very likely present in adjacent Guangdong province. But so far, Guangdong has reported no bird cases. Equally unusual is that after such...
...according to the government. Lo Wing-lok, president of the Hong Kong Medical Association and an expert on infectious disease, says that Hong Kong uses an older version of the H5 vaccine than mainland China, where there are more frequent outbreaks and farmers vaccinate poultry specifically against the H5N1 strain of the virus. (See pictures of Hong Kong from...