Bird Flu  

  Avian Influenza  

  Hybrid Flu Germ  

  © Foogle Business 2006  

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  Last-Modified:  05/21/06 09:24              

       By GINA KOLATA     October 2005

The 1918 influenza virus, the cause of one of history's most deadly epidemics, has been reconstructed and found to be a Bird Flu that jumped directly to humans, two teams of federal and university scientists announced yesterday.

It was the culmination of work that began a decade ago and involved fishing tiny fragments of the 1918 virus from snippets of lung tissue from two soldiers and an Alaskan woman who died in the 1918 pandemic. The soldiers' tissue had been saved in an Army pathology warehouse, and the woman had been buried in permanently frozen ground.

What is Bird Flu and Where does it come from?

Avian Flu is a virus carried by many birds in the wild, that are somewhat immune to its effect.

But it can kill domestic fowl who have not built up this immunity.

We can get from handling raw bird flesh. From handling contaminated bird faeces, that fell from the sky. Working with contaminated domestic fowl.

The present strain raging through some parts of the world's chickens and ducks is Codenamed H5N1.

It was first seen in Hong Kong in 1997, it was contained but has resurfaced, probably carried away by only one wild bird to other parts of Asia, and ultimately the whole planet.

This strain has now crossed over to infect Humans, and up to 200 have died.

Children and old people are particularly defenceless.

Tamiflu - The only Hope?

In the first few years after federal regulators approved the influenza-fighting pill Tamiflu in 1999, the drug suffered from lackluster sales and indifference from U.S. health officials more focused on creating new vaccines.

Now, demand for Tamiflu is outstripping supply.

The drug's sales have skyrocketed in recent months as a major U.S. vaccine supplier failed to meet half the nation’s needs and the World Health Organization, worried about the threat of a worldwide bird flu epidemic, urges governments to stockpile anti-viral drugs.

That's touched off a nasty dispute between two drug companies that are fighting for control of the pill’s growing profits — even as U.S. health experts fret about inadequate Tamiflu stockpiles and Third World countries threaten to ignore U.S. patents and make generic versions of the drug.

Tamiflu prevents the typical flu strains that occur every year from replicating in humans once a person is infected, shortening the illness' duration by two days while rendering its symptoms less severe.

The drug has never been tested on people infected with the bird flu that has swept through poultry populations in large swaths of Asia since 2003, killing at least 63 people.

But Tamiflu has showed promise in mice infected with that exotic flu strain, which health officials fear could spread globally, with disastrous results. Officials thus want to stockpile Tamiflu while they work to develop a bird flu vaccine.

"It appears that this is the only effective intervention we have once someone has been infected. It's the one treatment," said Jeffrey Levi, a policy analyst for Washington D.C.-based nonprofit Trust for America's Health. "The problem is that we don't have enough of it."

Tamiflu was invented in 1996 by scientists at Foster City-based Gilead Sciences Inc., which quickly sold all commercial rights and manufacturing responsibility in exchange for annual royalties to the Swiss giant Roche Holding AG.

Roche makes Tamiflu at its Basel, Switzerland plant and until last year, this sole source for the drug wasn’t a public health issue.

Sales of the prescription drug limped along at about $76 million in 2001 and $134 million in 2002 and were so lackluster that Gilead complained about Roche’s commitment to the drug.

"It has been a historically tough sell in a traditional flu market," said Sharon Seiler, an analyst for Punk, Ziegel & Co. "You need a prescription, you need to take it within 48 hours of symptoms and not all pharmacies stocked it."

But when the WHO in January 2004 urged the world to stockpile Tamiflu, sales skyrocketed. For the first half of this year, sales surged to $456 million.

Roche has doubled its Tamiflu manufacturing capacity in each of the last two years and plans a similar expansion next year, including manufacturing Tamiflu in some of its U.S. factories.

Still, orders are coming in faster than Roche can immediately fill.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt has called for a Tamiflu stockpile to treat 20 million Americans, yet there are only enough pills on hand to treat 2.3 million people. - CNN NEWS

Swiss pharmaceutical group Roche has asked generic drug firms to help speed up the manufacture of a key anti-viral ahead of a feared bird flu pandemic.

Demand has soared for the drug Tamiflu, which can fight the H5N1 avian flu strain causing concern at the moment.

Avian Influenza - Bird Flu

Bird flu is simply an infection caused by an Avian Influenza virus. The virus give flu-like symptoms, and occur naturally among birds. Wild birds worldwide carry the virus in their intestines, but generally do not get any ill-effect. However, bird flu is very contagious among birds, and will make the domesticated birds population very sick, eventually leading to death or euthanasia.

HUMAN INFLUENZA - also called grippe or flu, is an acute viral infection of the upper or lower respiratory tract that is marked by fever, chills, and a generalized feeling of weakness and pain in the muscles, together with varying degrees of soreness in the head and abdomen.

Influenza is caused by any of several strains of orthomyxo viruses, categorized as types A, B, and C. The type A virus is the most frequent cause of influenza; this type occurs in numerous strains that are differentiated on the basis of the viruses' surface proteins, their geographic origin, date of isolation, and other factors. The three major types of influenza viruses generally produce similar symptoms but are completely unrelated antigenically, so that infection with one type confers no immunity against the others.

Influenza A tends to occur in annual pandemics. The subtype of influenza A known as H2N2, or Asian flu, for instance, apparently began in East Asia early in 1957, and by midyear it had circled the globe. After 10 years of evolution that produced annual epidemics, the Asian flu disappeared in 1968, only to be replaced by a new influenza A subtype, H3N2.

Influenza  -  Several types of viruses cause this highly contagious disease, commonly called the flu. The viruses are spread from one person to another via airborne droplets released during coughing and sneezing. They lodge in the lungs and breathing passages, causing fever, chills, sore throat, coughing, headache, fatigue, and weakness. Most symptoms subside in several days, but complications, particularly pneumonia, can occur. Treatment consists of bed rest and plenty of fluids; antiviral drugs may be prescribed.

Vaccination to avoid infection is strongly recommended for people age 50 and older; people with heart disease, diabetes, or immune system problems; residents of nursing homes; family members and caregivers of such individuals; and health care workers. Unfortunately, the flu vaccine only prolution of a new strain can result in a worldwide epidemic. One of the worst such epidemics, the 1917-18 "Spanish flu," killed some 20 million people

Influenza may affect individuals of all ages, though the highest incidence of the disease is among children and young adults. Influenza is generally more frequent during the colder months of the year. The influenza infection is transmitted from person to person through the respiratory tract, by such means as inhalation of infected droplets resulting from coughing and sneezing. As the virus particles gain entrance to the body, they selectively attack and destroy the ciliated epithelial cells that line the upper respiratory tract, bronchial tubes, and trachea. The incubation period of the disease is one to two days, after which the onset of symptoms is abrupt, with sudden and distinct chills, fatigue, and muscular aches. The temperature rises rapidly to 38 to 40 °C (101 to 104 °F). A diffuse headache and severe muscular aches throughout the body are experienced, often accompanied by irritation or a sense of rawness in the throat. In three to four days the temperature begins to fall and the person begins to recover. Symptoms associated with respiratory tract infection, such as coughing and nasal discharge, become more prominent and may be accompanied by lingering feelings of weakness. Mortality from the disease is often high because so many people are infected. Death is caused, in most cases, by complications such as pneumonia or bronchitis, usually among older people who are weakened by other debilitating disorders.

The antiviral drug amantadine has a beneficial effect on cases of influenza involving the A virus type. A newer category of drugs, the neuraminidase inhibitors, was introduced in the late 1990s; these drugs inhibit both the influenza A and B viruses. Other than this, bed rest and the use of aspirin or other analgesics to control fever remain the standard treatment. Individual protection against influenza may be bolstered by injection of a vaccine containing two or more circulating influenza viruses. These viruses are produced in chick embryos and rendered non infective; standard commercial preparations ordinarily include the type B influenza virus and several of the A subtypes. Protection from one vaccination seldom lasts more than a year, and yearly vaccination may be recommended, particularly for those individuals who are unusually susceptible to influenza or whose weak condition could lead to serious complications in case of infection. Routine immunization in healthy people, however, is also recommended.

Influenza epidemics have a long history; the first clear description of one is perhaps that of the epidemic of 1610. The most severe outbreaks in modern times have been those of 1889–90 and 1918–19. The influenza epidemic of 1918–19 was the most destructive influenza outbreak in history and one of the most severe disease epidemics ever encountered. It is estimated that 25 million persons throughout the world died of the disease. Subsequent outbreaks of influenza have been much less severe.

MUTATION  -  For a myriad of reasons any living creature, from a Group B streptococci to a blue-whale could be prone to mutate. Whatever it should mutate into, is a lottery to some extent, but whatever it is, whether droll or a disaster, it is a fact of life that it happens; a phenomenon. 

Below is a real picture of a guy with SIX fingers on each hand. The combination perhaps, of the genes from both his parents that he inherited, that gave him a propensity to be different from the norm. By some fluke of nature he is different from about 99.999% of the rest of us. 

Should he ever breed with a woman who also has extra digits, there would be an even greater propensity for their offspring to have twelve fingers. Should  these children then have more kids with other children with twelve fingers, a new species of human could evolve. 

Mutation  -  A change in the hereditary material of the DNA of any organism, which results in some physical change in the organism or its offspring. Only a mutation in a germ cell is inherited by the offspring; a change in any other cell, the somatic cell, affects only those cells produced by division of the mutated cell. Mutations provide an important source of genetic variation in the population on which natural selection can act, which eventually results in the evolution of new specie types.

Mutations may occur quite by chance      - spontaneous mutations     -    or they may be caused by certain chemicals, ionizing radiation, such as X-rays, and even by ultraviolet light. 

You heard it here first. Consider although MRSA microbes have been around for over fifty years, and we might wonder what exactly allowed them to mutate to be resistant to antibiotics, what about mobile phone radiation. With 35% of the population carrying MRSA in their noses, what effect might this, now everyday radiation have. Not only to any wayward microbes, but what about young men carrying their phones in their pockets close to their scrotum.

Two rare white tiger cubs have been born at West Midlands Safari Park.

It is the first time the rare breed of Bengal tiger has been born in captivity in Britain. White Tigers were a Mutation. Now they have become a separate species.

  All suburls are, © copyright of Foogle Business 2006 

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