5 mutations make bird flu a pandemic

The H5N1 bird flu epidemic can be deadly, but so far it has not yet become a pandemic because it cannot be transmitted from human to human. This will probably change: 5 mutations in only 2 genes allow the virus to spread among mammals in the laboratory. Moreover, this virus is still lethal even if it can mutate.

>>>A / H1N1 flu "cool down" in the southern hemisphere

The virus is as effective as seasonal flu, said Ron Fouchier, Professor from Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, who led the study.

H5N1 has evolved in poultry species in Southeast Asia and has spread throughout Eurasia since 2004. During this time, 565 people were infected and 331 died. No strain of bacteria spreads easily and quickly among mammals that appear, despite having millions of infected birds and cats and dogs.

Attempts to create a similar virus in the laboratory have failed and some virologists think that simply H5N1 cannot do this.

First they created 3 mutations on possible H5N1 virus
Adjust to bird flu adaptation in humans.

Fouchier's work confirms the opposite. They first created three mutations in the H5N1 virus that could be adapted to adapt to human avian influenza.

This version of the virus kills ferrets, which react to viruses in the same way as humans. However, the virus is not transmitted between them.

The researchers then took the virus from the sick ferret to many other animals, a standard technique for adapting the pathogen to an animal. They repeated this process 10 times with strict control policies. The 10th round ferrets produced the H5N1 strain of viruses that could spread to other animals in the same cage separately and kill them.

This process produces viruses with many new mutations but only two mutations appear in all of them. Two new mutations and 3 new types show that only 5 mutations are enough to make the virus spread through the respiratory system. Currently, Fouchier is currently testing the H5N1 virus only created from these 5 mutations.

All of these mutants are isolated in H5N1 in poultry. If they appear separately, they may appear together, which means that H5N1 human-to-human transmission can evolve in poultry where it has been transmitted without time in the cave. mammals like pigs, he explained.

Peter Palese, a flu expert in New York City, suspects that H5N1 may alter adaptation to mammals is not convincing.

'Ferrets are not human. H5N1 has been around for a long time but has yet to mutate into a form that can be transmitted from human to human , 'he said.

However, some other experts argue that it has not changed yet does not mean that it cannot be changed. Fortunately for us, they are far from that stage of development.