Scientists simulate pandemic influenza outbreak in Chicago

Blacksburg, Va. – By using computer simulations and modeling, an international group of researchers including scientists from the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (VBI) at Virginia Tech’s Network Dynamics and Simulation Science Laboratory (NDSSL) have determined how a pandemic influenza outbreak might travel through a city similar in size to Chicago, Ill. This information helped them to determine the preferred intervention strategy to contain a potential flu pandemic, including what people should do to decrease the likelihood of disease transmission.

The new results, based on three different computer simulation models, are described in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by scientists involved in the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS).* MIDAS is a collaboration of research and informatics groups supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop computational models to examine interactions between infectious agents and their hosts, disease spread, prediction systems, and response strategies.

The global epidemic of avian influenza in bird populations, as well as the risk of a virulent form of the bird flu virus being transferred to humans, has made influenza pandemic preparedness a top public health priority in the United States, Europe, and other countries. The great influenza pandemic of 1918 resulted in 40 to 50 million deaths worldwide. If a pandemic were to occur today, it could cause widespread social and economic disruptions.

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Bird Flu Mutations

Study finds key markers for bird flu change

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers have found some of the changes that a flu virus needs to become a deadly pandemic strain, and said on Tuesday the H5N1 avian influenza virus has so far made only a few of them.

They said their study can help scientists watch for the mutations most likely to make H5N1 a global threat.

David Finkelstein of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, and colleagues looked at H5N1 virus samples from people who had been infected.

They found none were anywhere near as mutated as flu viruses that caused the three most recent pandemics, notably the 1918 "Spanish flu" that killed millions worldwide.

Writing in the Journal of Virology, Finkelstein's team said they identified 32 clear-cut changes in influenza viruses that differentiated a human flu from a bird flu.

Even when H5N1 viruses infected people, each one had made one or two of these changes at the most, Finkelstein said.

"We think they need to get to 13 to be truly dangerous," Finkelstein said in a telephone interview. "We never saw anything that approached the 13 that we saw in the Spanish flu."


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New vaccine may beat bird flu before it starts

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers studying bird flu viruses said on Thursday they may have come up with a way to vaccinate people before a feared influenza pandemic.

Experts have long said there is no way to vaccinate people against a new strain of influenza until that strain evolves. That could mean months or even years of disease and death before a vaccination campaign began.

But a team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Maryland and the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta said they may have found a short-cut.

The vaccine might protect people against the mutation that would change the H5N1 avian flu virus from a germ affecting mostly birds to one that infects people easily, the NIAID's Dr. Gary Nabel and colleagues report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

"If we can define what changes need to be made to make that jump then we can target the immune system to that spot on the virus," Nabel said in a telephone interview.

"It gives us a chance to develop vaccines or monoclonal antibodies ... to really work in a preemptive way to be prepared."

Monoclonal antibodies, often used against cancer, are engineered immune system proteins that specifically attack proteins on a tumor or, in this case, on the flu virus.

"While nobody knows if and when H5N1 will jump from birds to humans, they have come up with a way to anticipate how that jump might occur and ways to respond to it," National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Elias Zerhouni said in a statement.

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Altering Virus Coats May Halt Flu Spread

By LAURAN NEERGAARD AP Medical Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Making a small change in the outer coating of the lethal 1918 flu virus was enough to stop it from spreading, a discovery that may help scientists monitor today's bird flu and other influenza strains for signs of the next pandemic.

The 1918 pandemic was triggered by a bird virus that mutated into one that could attack humans, going on to kill a staggering 50 million people worldwide in a matter of months.
To learn what caused that catastrophic bird-to-human transformation, scientists with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention turned back the clock: They worked with recreated batches of the actual H1N1 flu strain that spawned the 1918 pandemic, but they altered two spots in a key protein to make that virus a little more birdlike again.

Then the researchers dripped the altered virus into the noses of ferrets, who catch and spread influenza like humans do.

The infected ferrets still sickened and died as the flu ravaged their lungs. But remarkably, they didn't infect healthy ferrets caged right next to them, the CDC team reports in Friday's edition of the journal Science.

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Small changes stop flu virus spread, study finds

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two little changes in the virus that caused the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic stopped it from spreading from one animal to another, a finding that may help determine what will cause the next pandemic, scientists reported on Thursday.

Researchers who have been studying a reconstructed version of the 1918 virus found it very easy to stop it from spreading from one infected ferret to another -- although the altered viruses still quickly killed the animals.

"Work on the 1918 virus is providing clues that are helping us evaluate other influenza viruses with pandemic potential, such as H5N1, that may emerge," said Dr. Terrence Tumpey, a U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention microbiologist who led the study.

"With this vital research, we are learning more about what may have contributed to the spread and deadliness of the 1918 pandemic," CDC' Director Dr. Julie Gerberding said in a statement.

"By better understanding how this virus spreads, we can be better positioned to slow down or stop the spread of the pandemic virus and hence be better prepared for the next pandemic."

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Bird flu claims first human life in West Africa

This can't be good...I was not aware this disease had made it to Africa...not the best environment for containing the spread of an infectious disease...

LAGOS (Reuters) - Nigeria confirmed the first human death from the H5N1 virus in sub-Saharan Africa on Wednesday after tests on a dead woman showed she had contracted bird flu.

The 22-year-old died after feathering and disemboweling an infected chicken. She was from Lagos, the commercial capital of Africa's most populous country, Information Minister Frank Nweke said.
Test on three other victims, one of them the woman's mother, were inconclusive.

Nigeria was the first African nation to detect the H5N1 virus in poultry last year and had conducted tests on 14 people suspected of having the virus.

Although bird flu remains essentially an animal disease, experts fear it could mutate into a form that could pass easily among humans, possibly killing millions

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Bird Flu Mutations Found

LONDON (AP) -- Mutations in the bird flu virus have been found in two infected people in Egypt, in a form that might be resistant to the medication most commonly used to treat the deadly disease, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
The mutations in the H5N1 virus strain were not drastic enough to make the virus infectious enough to spark a pandemic, WHO officials said. But more such mutations could prompt scientists to rethink current treatment strategies.
Samples taken from two bird flu patients in Egypt - a 16-year-old girl and her 26-year-old uncle - were not as responsive as regular H5N1 viruses to Tamiflu, a drug also know as oseltamivir that is used to treat the disease, the officials said.

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