not good news H5N1 AI virus and cats

From: Jill (news_at_REMOVETHISkintaline.co.uk)
Date: 09/02/04 

Date: Thu, 2 Sep 2004 21:23:11 +0100

  http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996352
Cats can spread deadly bird flu
19:00 02 September 04

NewScientist.com news service
Cats can catch - and spread - the bird flu that has ravaged poultry and
killed at least 26 people across East Asia in 2004. This is the first time
cats have been known to get sick from flu, and means the H5N1 virus has
already acquired the ability to spread in some mammals.
The fear now is that cats, and perhaps other animals, could act as a vessel
for the virus to further evolve into a human pandemic.
Thijs Kuiken and colleagues at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, the
Netherlands did the study after three cats and a zoo leopard living near
sick poultry in Thailand were confirmed in February 2004 to have died of
H5N1.
A tiger in the same zoo got sick with H5N1 but recovered. “Cats have never
been observed to get sick from flu infection before,” Kuiken told New
Scientist.
Lung damage
The team infected three laboratory cats with H5N1 taken from a human case in
Vietnam. All got very sick with flu symptoms, and post mortems showed they
had the same lung damage as people.
Cats given a human flu virus, H3N2, stayed healthy. Other cats studied
caught H5N1 by eating infected birds, while two healthy cats housed with the
sick animals caught the disease, showing it spreads among cats.
The results mean pet cats might give people H5N1 after eating one of the
many wild birds or poultry still infected across East Asia. But more
worrying than cats spreading the existing virus, says Kuiken, is how cats
might change its evolution.
H5N1 was already known to infect mammals – 34 people, of whom 23 died, were
confirmed to have the virus before the Asian poultry outbreak was largely
controlled in March.
Three more deaths have since been confirmed in Vietnam, where H5N1 has again
broken out in poultry. But so far the virus seems unable to spread from
person to person.
Lethal pandemic
If H5N1 acquires this ability, it could cause a lethal pandemic. The World
Health Organization fears the virus might do this by hybridising with a
human flu in a person infected with both.
Pigs also pose a theoretical risk as they catch both bird and human flu. In
August, Chen Hualan of Harbin University in China told a flu conference in
Beijing that H5N1 had been found in Chinese pigs in 2002 and 2003, which
China had not previously reported.
 What has received less attention, says Kuiken, is the possibility that H5N1
could quietly evolve the ability to spread among humans by itself, by
infecting species that select for viruses better adapted to mammals.
Some researchers think this route - rather than bird flu combining with a
human flu - is how the lethal 1918 flu pandemic evolved. Chen also reported
in Beijing that her team had successfully infected mice with H5N1 in the
lab.
“The more mammals the virus can infect, the greater the risk that it will
change to one that can transmit easily among mammals,” says Kuiken. The team
is now checking whether cats can catch another bird flu, H7N7, which broke
out in the Netherlands in 2003, and can infect humans.
Journal reference: Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1102287)
Debora MacKenzie 

--
regards
Jill Bowis
Pure bred utility chickens and ducks
Housing; Equipment,  Books, Videos, Gifts
Herbaceous; Herb and Alpine nursery
Holidays in Scotland and Wales
http://www.kintaline.co.uk

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