Bird Flu Virus Infects Human in First Documented Case, Raises Concern of Possible Pandemic
Long thought to not be able to spread to humans, a strand of the notorious bird flu was discovered in a young female patient in Taiwan.
The new strand H6N1 was found in a woman said to be in her 20s after she was hospitalized with a lung infection in May of this year. While in the hospital, doctors took a throat swab and sent the sample to the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control.
After testing it was determined that the new strand was that of H6N1 which had been widely found in chickens in Taiwan, but never before in a human patient.
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The patient was not identified and it has not been determined how she was able to contract the virus as she did not work where she would have come in contact with live birds.
Local reports also revealed that several of the woman's family members also developed flu-like symptoms, but none of them tested positive for H6N1. Documentation of the infection was recently published in the journal Lancet Respiratory Medicine while posing the question of how this new strain of virus might mutate and affect a large human population.
"The question again is what would it take for these viruses to evolve into a pandemic strain?" wrote Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands, in a commentary accompanying the new report.
More than 600 people have died as a result of the bird flu since being discovered in southern China in 1996. The transformation of the virus has been closely monitored but so far the virus has not mutated into a strand that is easily passed between humans.
Researchers have been vigorously trying to develop a cure and have seen promising signs in recent trials.
"They gave a third of the usual dose and yet had antibodies in over 80 percent," Dr. Greg Poland of the Mayo Clinic told AP. "This is encouraging news. We've struggled to make vaccines quickly enough against novel viruses," he said.
