Nature Reports Avian Flu Blog
Welcome to Nature Report's blog for Avian Flu. Email your comments and questions to 'avianflu at nature.com'.
Scientists have discovered a new needle-free way of vaccinating against flu – under the tongue! This is not only good news for needle-phobics but has wider implications for preparations against the impending pandemic. Needle immunisations require skilled professionals whereas a drop of vaccine placed under the tongue could potentially be performed by anyone.
Read more here.
Live virus vaccines better mimic the natural course of infection and so generate superior immunity to killed or inactivated virus. Yet uptake of the Live-attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV) has been low, due to fears over the safety of the vaccine and the ability of the attenuated virus to transmit from person-to-person.
Now a review from the Mayo Clinic hopes to dispel these myths and promote wider acceptance of the vaccine. If more people were given LAIV over the inactivated virus it would give greater protection within the community, generating so-called ‘herd immunity’. With that in mind – would you go live?
Pandemic influenza is not just a threat to global health - it will undoubtedly have a huge economic impact that could also affect governance and security, according to David Nabarro, UN System Senior Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza, speaking earlier this month at the London School of Economics.
People missing work to avoid infection will pose the biggest problem – causing reduced productivity and trade. And it’s easy to see how problems will quickly escalate with a diminished police force and reduced national security!
So we should stay at work – and increase the risk of viral transmission? It’s a mixed message...
The answer lies in effective communication – it is imperative that accurate advice and information is disseminated quickly throughout the community, and that the media avoid ‘scare-mongering’. A key element of pandemic preparedness relies on ensuring that channels of communication are in place and ready to respond quickly.
Would you listen to those messages and stay at work? I’m not sure....
Listen to the Podcast of this lecture here.
A WHO team have been sent to Pakistan to investigate the potential human-human transmission of H5N1. A cluster of 8 cases started in mid-November following a culling operation to control poultry outbreaks, but was only reported to the WHO on December 15.
In the interim, a man returned to his home in New York after attending the funeral of family members confirmed to be part of the cluster. Although he quarantined himself and subsequently tested negative for H5N1 – should he have been allowed to travel?
Read more at Nature News.
That is the call from Walter Boyce, the co-director of the NIH Center for Rapid Influenza Surveillance and Research, in his Nature Commentary about the global surveillance of avian flu infections.
"..dead birds do not tell us about the birds that don’t get sick when infected – those that could spread H5N1 over longer distances"
He highlights three steps to improve the current approach to tracking avian flu infections:
1.Greater sharing of data and virus samples.
2.Greater surveillance of wild birds, particularly in endemic regions.
3.Better characterisation and diagnoses of all virus sub-types - remembering that H5N1 is not the only strain that poses a pandemic threat…
In light of the continuing stand-off with Indonesia, how realistic are these suggestions?
The Commentary is currently available free here.
Is Indonesia right to withhold samples of the H5N1 virus? Talks held by the WHO in Geneva last week failed to reach an agreement. Monitoring viral samples is essential for tracking mutations in the deadly H5N1 strain and represents our best hope for developing vaccines against a potential pandemic. However, Indonesia has withheld viral samples since August 2007 amidst fears that they would not be able to afford vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies.
As part of an “equitable sharing of benefits”, Indonesia is now demanding a ‘materials transfer agreement’ for each virus sample sent to foreign labs, specifying that the sample is for diagnostic use only and should not be used for commercial gain (Reuters).
Read more from the Nature News blog.The Great Beyond