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Flu season is just around the corner in the northern hemisphere. But for birds and pigs, it's flu season year round. These animals are common hosts for the influenza virus, which comes in a wide range of strengths and types—some of which can infect humans. So keeping tabs on the illness in animals is a big focus of flu research.
"We are keeping birds and pigs in numbers that are unprecedented, so you create new niches for animals, and especially for viruses to emerge." Ab Osterhaus, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, at the recent European Working Group on Influenza conference.
"If these animals are in contact with wild birds, for instance, you create new pathways that didn't exist there in the past."
To find out how viruses from animals might become even more deadly in people, researchers are on the alert.
"Just a couple of mutations in birds suffice to actually make a virus hotter, and so make a virus transmissible from human to human. So I think surveillance for these kinds of things should be increased. We have to do much more.”
—Katherine Harmon
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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3 Comments
Add CommentI would recomend a large amount of government funding on mutation experiments conducted by scientists since government can make sure application of such experiments may not lead to a biological weapon falling in hands of likes of AL-QUAEDA(Al-hassan).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 1o'7 angels already dropped the "big one" . Wait for the signal in dec2012
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is just an idea! -
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOrgan transplants are life giving and, amazing.
However, if viruses contained in some of the donors cells are introduced into a different host's bodies might they not mutate differently evolve differently or even more rapidly than they would have done had they not been transplanted at all?
Also the host's natural immuno-suppressant's are
[due to anti rejection protocols] being attenuated.
This might give the virus/s if present even greater scope for change
The above could lead to a more virulent form of human- to- human viral mutation.
Best wishes,
marjorie.