Friday, October 07, 2005
H5N1: The fluuuuuu!
So if you have not heard, I come with the word. The Avian bird flu, or H5N1, is getting a lot of media coverage. So far, the virus has killed 60 people and millions of birds. Currently, the humans seem to only contract it from poultry. Countries with a high poultry population such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia are the most vulnerable.
H5N1 is different from the flu varities of recent years in two significant ways. First, it is widely believed that humans have no natural immunity to it; it is an altogether different strain of flu. Second, the bird flu — at least for now — isn't easily transmitable between humans. However, viruses recombine and mutate fairly regularly, dropping and adding pieces of DNA between transmissions. It is possible that H5N1 could recombine with the common flu and come to pack a deadly one-two punch. How likely that is to happen remains an unanswered question.
There is a vaccine for the current strain of H5N1. However, the stock of vaccine as well as the production capacity to mass produce the vaccine are limited. Recently, the U.S. has awarded contracts to drug makers Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKlien as part of a plan to amass 20 million vaccines and 20 million anti-virals.
These preventative measures, while requisite, are nevertheless futile because they were designed to treat the current strain of the virus. If a pandemic breaks, it will likely be due to a different strain of H5N1, one that will not respond to current vaccines. Developing a new vaccine is estimated to take between 4 and 6 months, and this will be spearheaded by the U.S. and other developed countries. The WHO fears that developing countries in southeast Asia and Africa will be left out in the cold.
The last major flu pandemic was in 1918. The "Spanish Flu" killed more than 50 million (!) people. In an effort to understand this virus and related viruses better,
the CDC has resurrected the 1918 flu. They have found that this virus was an avian flu that jumped to humans.
This has the potential to be much worse than SARS, which as you may recall was believed to have contracted from Chinese bats. So stay away from live poultry if you can.
H5N1 is different from the flu varities of recent years in two significant ways. First, it is widely believed that humans have no natural immunity to it; it is an altogether different strain of flu. Second, the bird flu — at least for now — isn't easily transmitable between humans. However, viruses recombine and mutate fairly regularly, dropping and adding pieces of DNA between transmissions. It is possible that H5N1 could recombine with the common flu and come to pack a deadly one-two punch. How likely that is to happen remains an unanswered question.
There is a vaccine for the current strain of H5N1. However, the stock of vaccine as well as the production capacity to mass produce the vaccine are limited. Recently, the U.S. has awarded contracts to drug makers Sanofi-Aventis and GlaxoSmithKlien as part of a plan to amass 20 million vaccines and 20 million anti-virals.
These preventative measures, while requisite, are nevertheless futile because they were designed to treat the current strain of the virus. If a pandemic breaks, it will likely be due to a different strain of H5N1, one that will not respond to current vaccines. Developing a new vaccine is estimated to take between 4 and 6 months, and this will be spearheaded by the U.S. and other developed countries. The WHO fears that developing countries in southeast Asia and Africa will be left out in the cold.
The last major flu pandemic was in 1918. The "Spanish Flu" killed more than 50 million (!) people. In an effort to understand this virus and related viruses better,
the CDC has resurrected the 1918 flu. They have found that this virus was an avian flu that jumped to humans.
This has the potential to be much worse than SARS, which as you may recall was believed to have contracted from Chinese bats. So stay away from live poultry if you can.
