Thursday, January 26, 2012

Researcher at heart of bird flu studies controversy reveals details of his findings

TORONTO - A scientist at the centre of a raging controversy over bird flu transmission studies has broken his silence, in the process revealing information about his study that has not been made public previously.
In a commentary in the journal Nature, flu virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka argued the work he and other high level influenza scientists do to try to puzzle out why some flu viruses spread in humans while others don't is too important to be shelved.

"Our work remains urgent — we cannot give it up," wrote Kawaoka, who up until now has made no comment on the controversy that is pitting flu scientists against the community of biosecurity experts, some of whom insist no further transmission studies on the dangerous H5N1 flu virus should be undertaken.

In his commentary, Kawaoka revealed that his laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison made a hybrid virus, fusing the hemagglutinin protein (the H in a flu virus's name) from H5N1 onto the human H1N1 virus that caused the 2009 pandemic.

The H1N1 virus spreads easily among people but H5N1 currently does not.

They found the viruses came together readily, and spread easily among ferrets kept in separate cages. Ferrets are considered the best animal model for predicting how a flu virus will act in humans and that type of study is meant to replicate the conditions under which flu viruses transmit among humans.

But while it was highly transmissible, the mutant virus did not kill the ferrets, Kawaoka reported. In fact, it was no more pathogenic to the animals than the 2009 H1N1 virus, he said. More

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