Word: influenza
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...viruses, which mutate and leap between species. New strains are constantly evolving as viral genes are swapped between host bird species. 'The 1997 strain was a reassortment from three viruses from goose and, we think, the quail,' says Kennedy Shortridge, a University of Hong Kong microbiologist who has studied influenza since 1975 ... The so-called Asian flu, first identified in China in 1957, and the Hong Kong flu of 1968 together killed more than 1.5 million people worldwide ... the concern is that another fatal combination could leap the species barrier at any time ... Shortridge says, 'It's a dangerous situation...
What is it? Avian flu is a form of influenza that often kills domesticated poultry such as chickens and turkeys. Some strains of bird flu can make humans sick, too. The most dangerous is H5N1, which has caused at least 10 human deaths during the current outbreak. H5N1 first jumped the species barrier from birds to humans in Hong Kong in 1997, when six out of 18 infected people died. The fear is that H5N1 could combine with a human-flu strain to create a deadly virus that's so contagious it could cause a human pandemic...
...does a chicken flu become a human flu? The answer is in the RNA of the virus itself. Influenza viruses are known as shape-shifters, possessing the rare ability to swap proteins with other influenza viruses to create, essentially, new influenza viruses. As long as an H5N1 virus stays in its host species?ducks?then there is little risk of a human pandemic arising. But once that virus has infected chickens, then the chances of jumping to human beings, usually through contact with chicken feces, rise considerably. In humans, the virus is more likely to swap proteins with a human...
...recently as last March, according to a document obtained by TIME, China's Ministry of Health was requesting from the WHO H5N1 reagents, which are used to test for presence of antibodies to the virus. That would indicate, at the very least, that China suspected this type of influenza might be afflicting its poultry but did not yet have the means to test. Both Japan and Taiwan have intercepted shipments of tainted duck meat from the mainland in the past year. Kim Sun Jwong, an avian-diseases expert at Seoul National University, believes the Middle Kingdom is the most likely...
...there could be an even more ominous disease vector at work?or in flight. For years, the greatest fear of many influenza experts has been the possibility that the H5N1 strain would infect migratory birds. Since huge amounts of virus are shed in bird feces, such an epidemic among migratory birds would mean death raining down from the sky in the form of H5N1 virus. In November and December of 2002, there were numerous migratory-waterfowl deaths due to H5N1 in Hong Kong's Penfold and Kowloon parks. Mysteriously, when further screenings of migratory birds were conducted immediately after...