Urgent warning issued as lethal chook flu ‘evolving too quick for vaccines to maintain up’
Wild birds, poultry, cattle and even farmworkers in the United States have already caught the virus, urging scientists to work on vaccinations to protect human health
A dangerous bird flu is rapidly evolving and weakening existing antibodies, posing a potential threat to human beings as testing revealed immune response effectiveness is in decline.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States found that the respiratory H5N1 influenza mutations may soon allow human-to-human transmission, raising serious concerns about an another oncoming pandemic.
Wild birds, poultry, cattle and even farmworkers have already caught the disease, urging boffins to work on swift vaccine developments as the virus can pose a serious risk to human and animal health.
Advanced computational modelling was used to see how the virus interacted with the human immune system, and the virus was found to be evolving disturbingly quickly in evading immune defences.
The disease poses a significant risk to both agriculture and human health.
Boffins found antibodies are becoming less and less effective against new strains of the flu, suggesting that cases of human-to-human transmission are much more likely.
UNC Charlotte’s CIPHER centre researchers found “a trend of weakening binding affinity of a wide variety of existing antibodies, collected from vaccinated and or infected hosts, against H5 viral isolates over time.”
This means they studied how well antibodies can stick to or neutralise the virus, and they found those who were vaccinated or infected seem to become less effective at fighting it.
Global researchers agree that “the avian virus (remains) high on lists of potential pandemic agents,” as reported in Science in December last year.
No human-to-human transmission has yet been reported, but there were 70 human cases of H5N1, with one fatality, in the USA.
Cattle in at least 17 states have been reported as infected with the disease, alongside millions of wild birds, small mammals, chickens and other flocks.
The WHO says 466 people have died of the virus since January 2003.
In eBioMedicine, the Charlotte research team said their findings “indicate that the virus has potential to move from epidemic to pandemic status in the near future.”
The spread of H5N1 from wild birds to chickens, dairy cattle, and farm workers shows its ability to infect across species.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletter by clicking here.
