Mutation of Bird Flu

[lilposhgirl]

Is anyone else slighty concerned about the fact bird flu could have mutated?? xxxx

[Booldawg]

My partner is always accusing me of having 'man flu' I'm glad there is such thing a bird flu now. Kind of re-dresses the balance.

[lilposhgirl]

Hahahahaha

[undercovers]

not even a little bit - remember SARS, no neither do i

[lilposhgirl]

But sars wasnt as virulent (or however u spell it)

[mushroom25]

like all flu viruses bird flu is bound to mutate. it may mutate to a form readily transmittable to humans, or it may not. if it becomes readily transmittable it may retain or increase its virulence, or it may become weaker. today's mass movement of people will ensure that a transmittable variation will be spread rapidly around the globe, and a large proportion of the population will be exposed to it. not everyone will be susceptible, nor will all those who contract it be affected in the same way.

in a nutshell, whatever happens will happen, and we will have very little control. so there's not much point in worrying.

[scubadiver]

There is absolutely nothing to worry about as the situation stands at the moment- the current H5N1 strain that has been in the news, has only been transmitted to humans working in close contact with infected birds. There have been no cases of human to human transmission, which is what the WHO and health experts are watching for.

In order for this to happen, genetic material from the avian strain would need to mix in the same cell with a human flu strain ( ie, someone would have to be infected with bird flu and human flu at the same time-(or in a pig, as they can support both bird and human strains)) to form a completely new strain for which there is no circulating immunity.

As and when this may happen, then we should be concerned- until then, not at all.

[kev100]

If you have any doubts about the mutation of bird flu look no farther than Tony Blair or Margaret Thatcher

[jake-the-peg]

They damn well remember SARS in Toronto undercovers!

There was a lot of very hard work all over the planet that stopped that from getting here and killing hundreds of thousands of people!

But as Scubadiver says I wouldn't panic about bird flu too much yet - Unless you have shares in Bernard Matthews that is

[lilposhgirl]

My rason for this post was, yesterday they were unsure if it had mutated because a whole family in indoneisia had died from it, i don't know whats come of it but just thort id sayxxxx

[scubadiver]

I was on the WHO website last night looking at the info on this recent outbreak. There have been similar "cluster" outbreaks in the past- the problem with this one is the person who was the initial exposure case and who died first- their body was cremated without being typed for any flu virus. While there appears to be no direct contact between subsequent infected family members and infected birds, they are still looking for this link.

They have typed the virus strain that has infected the remaining family members and this shows no apparent mutation. This would suggest unless they HAVE come into contact with an infected bird, then the unmutated H5N1 strain has suddenly become transmissable between humans, which seems very unlikely.

I'd still say there is nothing to worry about at this stage.

[jno]

viruses mutate a lot in the search for better hosts and their own survival - look at the way there's a different strain of the common cold every couple of years. We can make intelligent guesses about what might happen, and try to prepare vaccines in advance, but it involves preparing for a worst-case scenario and you'd have to acknowledge that this probably won't happen. On an individual level there's nothing much to be done except stop living with birds, but at a national level health authorities will try to plan ahead.

[scubadiver]

jno- the reason the flu virus changes so rapidly is that it is an RNA virus- its genetic material is single stranded. If there are any mistakes made in transcription when the virus multiplies there is no mechanism to correct this mistake, as there is in a DNA virus. Hence the reason any RNA virus is considered reasonably unstable. This phenomenon is known as "Antigenic Drift"

[PhilBy]

Just to correct scubadiver if I may, but it was announced on the news last night (24/05/06) that the first 6 cases of bird flu has been found in humans who have had no contact with birds at all.

[PhilBy]

I should of course added that this was not in this country............ can't really remember, tho it may of been Indonesia?

[scubadiver]

Philby-the cluster of 7 family members (1 initial contact plus 6 later) that you are referring to are in Northern Sumatra, Indonesia. According to today's reports (25th) several of the family sold fruit and veg at a local market where slaughter of live birds occurred.

This is thought to have been the probable route of contamination and as of yet, there is no definate evidence to say that human to human transmission has occurred.

[Echo]

Mutated into what? SARS?