Word: viruses
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...troops to enforce quarantines. He also recommended that folks read John Barry's book on the 1918 pandemic that killed more than 50 million people worldwide and that serves as a reminder of the kind of threat that the world could face (see ESSAY). A reconstruction of the 1918 virus, reported in scientific journals last week, shows it to be an avian strain that mutated just enough to infect humans directly and easily...
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...
...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 patient's weakened lungs could burst. But, he says, survival ultimately comes down to "the patient's immune system...
There are troubling signs, however, that H5N1 is on the move. The virus killed thousands of wild geese in China this past spring and popped up among migratory birds in parts of Siberia this summer. There was a report in May about a handful of infected pigs in western Java. Even more worrisome, Indonesian health authorities said last week that a number of chickens on household farms in Jakarta had been testing positive for H5N1 without showing signs of illness. If confirmed, that development could severely complicate efforts to track and control bird flu in poultry. Without dead chickens...
...tests on samples taken from two of the most recent human victims of bird flu show no cause for immediate alarm. "There are no obvious changes in the virus that we tested," says Dr. Guan Yi, an avian-flu expert at the University of Hong Kong who has helped sound the pandemic alarm. For now, he says, there's "nothing new. Nothing to worry about." The viral genes are still the same avian-flu genes that haven't figured out how to spread easily from one person to another...