Study finds deadly bird flu is five steps away from being a pandemic

June 22, 2012 – HEALTH – Five genetic tweaks made a deadly strain of bird flu that can infect humans spread more easily, according to a study that the U.S. government had first sought to censor on concerns it could be used by bioterrorists. The genetic changes made the H5N1 virus airborne among ferrets, the mammals whose response to flu is most like that of humans, researchers from the Netherlands wrote in the journal Science yesterday. The likelihood of those changes occurring naturally is difficult to estimate but there is “no fundamental hurdle to that happening,” said Derek Smith, a University of Cambridge researcher who led a second study. Scientists have been monitoring for pandemic-inducing changes in H5N1 since the strain was recovered from a farmed goose in China’s southern province of Guangdong in 1996. The virus has since spread across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa, devastating poultry flocks and causing sporadic infections in people, among whom it doesn’t efficiently transmit. “We now know that we’re living on a fault line,” Smith said on a conference call with reporters. “It’s an active fault line, it really could do something, and now what we need to know is, how likely is that?” Publication of the paper was delayed after a U.S. biosecurity panel in December asked the scientists to censor some parts of their work to prevent it being used by bioterrorists. Researchers meeting at the World Health Organization in February agreed the full findings should be published to help scientists design vaccines and drugs, and public health officials prepare for a pandemic. –SF Gate