A virulent strain of bird flu has claimed its first human life in the US, raising concerns about a potential pandemic.
A virulent strain of bird flu has claimed its first human victim with the death of a patient in Louisiana, US health officials have reported. This strain, detected since 2021, poses the greatest pandemic threat from avian influenza since the virus was first detected 28 years ago. However, the overall risk of the disease gaining the ability to spread between humans remains low.
Researchers sequenced samples swabbed from the nose and throat of the Louisiana patient, who caught the virus from backyard chickens, and found that the virus had mutated to better latch onto receptors in our upper airways, a change that may allow it to become more infectious between people. The patient who died was older than 65 and had underlying health problems. But in November, a 13-year-old girl in British Columbia, Canada, was also hospitalised with the virus in a critical condition. The teenager was hooked up to supplemental oxygen for six weeks as she battled acute respiratory distress syndrome - where fluid on the lungs makes it difficult to breathe. The girl also had conjunctivitis, a hallmark of the 60-odd other human cases of bird flu infection that struck North America last year. Almost all the infections have been mild and were caused by contact with sick cows or chickens. But the source of the Canadian teenager’s severe infection is a mystery – although genomic analysis showed both she and the Louisiana patient were infected with a strain of the virus associated with wild birds and poultry rather than cows. Experts have said these cases underscore the urgency of staying on top of human cases and the virus’s evolutionary dance as it spills between a network of wild and domestic host animals. How did we get here? Highly pathogenic avian influenza arose in 1997. Human infections are very rare because birds have very different cell receptors to us
BIRD FLU PANDEIM VIRUS HUMAN INFECTION HEALTH THREAT
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