Friday, March 24, 2006

Flu News for Humans

CIDRAP News reports on the WHO's flu-fighting plans:

WHO has convened experts three times since December to consider a draft protocol for early containment of a pandemic flu, the document states.
To further that effort, an international stockpile of antivirals has been created with industry donations. Three million treatment courses will be ready by May for use only in an intervention to contain the virus at it source, the WHO said.
Success would depend on prompt response to suspicious clusters of human influenza cases, WHO acknowledged. The mass dispensing of antivirals would need to start within 21 days after detection of the first case of efficient human-to-human transmission. Accomplishing that implies succeeding at a number of earlier steps, including detecting the clusters, communicating quickly and accurately from the local to the international level, and quickly obtaining outside assistance in investigation and response.


Also in the flu news, New Scientist reports on why bird flu in humans is so deadly yet hard to catch:

The H5N1 virus binds to sugars on the surface of cells deep in human lungs, but not to cells lining the human nose and throat. So report the two research teams, led by Thijs Kuiken at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka at the Universities of Tokyo, Japan and Wisconsin at Madison, US.
This fits the few autopsies that have been performed on H5N1 victims, who had damage to the alveoli – the delicate sacs deep in the lungs, where oxygen enters the blood.
Flu normally travels between people by being sneezed out and breathed in through the nose and throat. Both groups concluded that poor binding of the H5N1 high in the respiratory tract might be why the virus has so far not been able to spread easily between people – a major factor keeping it from becoming pandemic.

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