Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Bird Flu research - report from UK

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine say that a limited cross infection of bird flu from human to human is not surprising.

They say that in China the majority of the 133 confirmed cases reported so far seem to be epidemiologically unconnected, with many patients reporting a recent history of exposure to live poultry, which are suspected to be a main reservoir for the virus. Although an earlier study did report two family clusters of H7N9 cases, it was unclear whether these clusters resulted from person to person transmission or simply from exposure to a common animal source of infection.

The researchers say that although the study, led by the Jiangsu Province Center for Disease Control and Prevention, provides the strongest evidence yet of H7N9 transmission between humans, it probably does not mean that the virus has come one step closer towards adapting fully to humans.

The full report in the British Medical Journal is here:
http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f4730

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