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Bio lingo?!

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News flash

Avian influenza (H5N1) virus is possibly spreading among humans in Vietnam, the World Health Organization (WHO) said in a document made publicon its Web site on Thursday (May 19).

Reporting on an international meeting held in the Philippines last week, WHO officials said worrying changes in the epidemiology of the virus had been seen between January and April this year in the north of Vietnam. "Investigators were not able to prove that human-to-human transmission had occurred, [but] they expressed concerns, which were shared by local clinicians," they said.

The document notes concerns that the latest H5N1 strains could be resistant to the antiviral oseltamivir, previously thought effective in fighting infection. It also discusses changes to the hemagglutinin (HA) protein that have been noted in 2005 H5N1 isolates, but had not been seen in 2004 sequence data. "The changes are consistent with the possibility that recently emerging H5N1 viruses may be more infectious for humans," the document's authors wrote.

"Recent viruses circulating in Northern Vietnam have lost an arginine residue in the mutibasic amino cluster at the proteolytic cleavage site of the HA protein," they warned. "The structure of the cleavage site is typical of highly pathogenic viruses." Epidemiological data also suggest the virus is "behaving" differently.

Kwok Yung Yuen, who heads the University of Hong Kong Microbiology Department—which operates a WHO designated laboratory—said, however, that epidemiological studies support the possibility that the virus pathogenicity has been somewhat reduced. "Fewer people are dying than before, and the disease is affecting a wider age group," he told The Scientist.

According to the WHO document, human bird flu clusters show a lag time between infections. This raises the possibility of incubation periods typical for human to human transmission of flu.