News Reports for June 23, 2012

Bolivia Reported 637 Confirmed Cases of Influenza A (H1N1)

La Paz, Jun 22 - The Bolivian Minister of Health and Sports, Juan Carlos Calvimontes, confirmed the record of 637 patients with influenza A (H1N1) and 2,276 suspected cases.

(Snip) epidemiological reports register five deaths, (Snip) the department with more registered patients is La Paz, with more than 300 positive cases.

(Snip) in other regions preventive measures were taken, especially to prevent students from being affected by the low temperatures of the time. http://www.plenglish.com/index...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Jun 23, 2012 at 01:41:25 AM UTC

More Bird Flu Research Goes Public, Has Bad News About Global Pandemic Possibilities

It was just about three years ago that H1N1 made its way onto the 24 hour news cycle, planting itself there like its own kind of virus and fed by good ol' fashioned fear. You might have chuckled swine flu off as more media overhype - or just looked at it rationally - but maybe deep down you felt a certain special something: loss of control. H1N1 felt sudden and unexpected, like something scientists were puzzling over in an Atlanta bunker while worrying about their families on the outside. Because we've all seen too many movies. But then H1N1 was kind of a dud, a more severe version of regular day-to-day flu. Reports had that it sucked terribly to have it - the worst flu you've ever had and then some - but we weren't exactly burning our dead.

Meanwhile, back in 2012, avian flu (H5N1, bird flu) is already a real thing in the world, packing a heavy fatality rate in some parts of the world, but it hasn't quite found a good transmission vector; we still catch it from birds - far less so, other people, like those found on international flights and packed subway trains and restaurant kitchens. Fortunately, most of us don't work with poultry. Two pieces of research published today in Science - after months of controversy about their publication - suggests the virus on its way to something new and more easily passed around. Like anything else in the universe, bird flu is highly interested in mutating and evolving, making itself better. Which is worse for us. Continued: http://motherboard.vice.com/20...


Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Jun 23, 2012 at 01:46:16 AM UTC

DURC policy in flux in the wake of published H5N1 studies

Jun 21, 2012 (CIDRAP News) - Though today's publication of the second of two H5N1 transmissibility papers ends a waiting period, it doesn't halt the uncertainty over what the 8 months of controversy means for future dual-use research of concern (DURC) and the status of a voluntary moratorium.

Several experts addressed the topic in scientific journals today, including some in a special H5N1 issue of Science that accompanied the journal's publication of the study by a group at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands led by Ronald Fouchier, PhD. The issue also contains a related mathematical modeling study on the mutations that were the focus of the study.

(See related story, "Fouchier study reveals changes enabling airborne spread of H5N1." http://184.73.192.197/cidrap/c... )

(Snip)

NIAID is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency that funded the two H5N1 transmission studies. Fauci has been involved in national and international deliberations and has been at the center of US policy debate and decisions on the issue.

He said though the NSABB eventually determined that both studies should be published in full, the issues and challenges of balancing the potential benefits of the research with risks to public health haven't ended. He said government officials and scientists have learned some critical lessons about the execution and oversight of DURC, which spurred the Mar 29 publication of guidelines for federal agencies to use to address DURC issues.

Fauci said the federal government is developing guidelines to help biosafety committees at research institutions evaluate DURC, which will appear soon in the Federal Register for public comments. "The US government certainly looks forward to the input it receives as part of this process," he said.

The document will be more "granular" than the Mar 29 policy and will detail what institutions need to focus on and what principles they need to follow, Fauci said. He added that he looks forward to the public comment step, which should help clarify what infrastructure is in place to manage DURC issues.

Attention shifts to moratorium issues
Fauci said now that both H5N1 papers are published, observers are wondering when the moratorium that researchers agreed to in January can be discontinued. He said officials and scientists are struggling a bit with putting together criteria for the next phases of research that could trigger similar DURC concerns.

"So I can't tell you when it's going to be voluntarily lifted, but we are working very hard right now to get a process in place where we could have some broad general criteria of the kinds of experiments that could be done," he told reporters. Fauci added that the moratorium narrowly focuses on "gain of function" experiments that increase the transmissibility and/or pathogenesis of H5N1. Continued: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Jun 23, 2012 at 06:22:45 AM UTC

CDC unveils new pandemic preparedness tools

Jun 22, 2012 (CIDRAP News) - The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) yesterday unveiled two new tools designed to boost pandemic preparedness: an inventory of H5N1 avian influenza genetic changes and a system the CDC and its partners are developing to help evaluate the threat from flu viruses circulating in animals.

The CDC posted details about the new tools on its Web site yesterday, the same day highly anticipated findings from the second of two controversial H5N1 transmission studies-the one from a group at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands-was published in Science.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the CDC, told CIDRAP News that the CDC waited for the publication of the study from Erasmus, led by Ron Fouchier, PhD, to unveil the H5N1 genetic changes inventory. "The inventory has been in the works for a while, and we wanted it to be as complete and up to date as possible when we first posted to include the Fouchier sequences," he said.

The CDC said the H5N1 changes inventory is geared toward those conducting influenza surveillance in humans and animals, as well as those conducting research on H5N1. The inventory is a list of amino acid changes grouped by viral protein. Listed wth each mutation are the phenotypic consequences, the virus isolate tested, and selected literature references.

The World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center for Influenza at the CDC, along with international partners, developed the inventory and will update it periodically and apply date stamps when it adds new mutations, the CDC said.

The Influenza Risk Assessment Tool (IRAT) is designed to help public health officials prioritize their pandemic preparedness activities, such as developing new vaccines and boosting surveillance, according to background information from the CDC's Web site. The CDC emphasized that the tool isn't intended to predict pandemics or limit input from experts. "Flu is unpredictable, as are future pandemics," it said.

IRAT considers two dimensions in estimating the pandemic risk associated with a flu virus: emergence, or the risk of a novel virus spreading easily and efficiently in humans, and public health impact, meaning the possible severity and burden on society.

The tool allows flu experts to evaluate novel viruses using 10 scientific criteria, such as genomic variation and antigenic relationship to vaccine candidates, grouped into three categories: properties of the virus, attributes of the population, and ecology and epidemiology of the virus. Each criterion is weighted statistically as it relates to each of the two scenarios. Composite scores allow experts to rank and compare viruses, based on their potential pandemic risk. Continued: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Jun 23, 2012 at 06:30:03 AM UTC

Debate over H5N1 fatality rate flares again

Jun 22, 2102 (CIDRAP News) - In the latest chapter in an ongoing debate over the true case-fatality ratio (CFR) for human H5N1 influenza infections, a group of leading flu experts has written a Science article rejecting the idea that millions of H5N1 infections have gone undetected.

The debate was sparked by the controversy over publication of two studies involving lab-created H5N1 viruses with airborne transmissibility (both of which have now been published in full). Some proponents of publishing the full details of the studies argued that the true H5N1 case-fatality ratio (CFR) is probably much lower than the nearly 60% observed in confirmed cases, because in their view many mild or asymptomatic cases have likely been missed.

In February, Science published a meta-analysis by a team from Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City who said that on the basis of seroprevalence studies, the infection rate in populations exposed to H5N1 could be 1% to 2%, which would probably translate into millions of infections globally. The authors were Taia T. Wang, PhD, Michael K. Parides, PhD, and Peter Palese, PhD.

In the article published today, flu experts write that Wang and colleagues "overinterpret the results of seroprevalence studies and take too little account of underlying uncertainties. Although the true risk of death from H5N1 infection will likely be lower than the 60% of reported laboratory-confirmed cases, there is little evidence of millions of missed infections."

The article is accompanied by a response from the Mount Sinai group, who observe that the combined rural population of countries where H5N1 outbreaks occur is about 1 billion and assert that the tests used in seroprevalence studies probably miss many cases.
(Snip)
The main way to detect asymptomatic or subclinical cases is to conduct seroprevalence studies, looking for H5N1 antibodies in people who weren't sick but may have been exposed to the virus, such as contacts of confirmed case-patients, poultry cullers, or residents of an area where poultry outbreaks occurred. In nearly all such studies conducted since 2003, few people tested positive, if any.

The Van Kerkhove article says that H5N1 cases in both the numerator and denominator of the CFR are undoubtedly being missed, since in some disease-related deaths the cause remains undetermined and some sick people never seek medical care. But it notes that in a recent systematic review by Van Kerkhove and others, most studies found no seropositive individuals, and the seropositive rate in the rest was less than 3%. Continued: http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidr...

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. --Unknown

     

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by: Carol@SC @ Sat Jun 23, 2012 at 06:40:20 AM UTC

Livestock Service Officials Destroyed 650 Quails [East Java]

Shared by dbg: http://www.lensaindonesia.com/...

Birds died suddenly, 75 thousand AI vaccine distributed to Bojonegoro
Friday, June 22, 2012 20:15 pm.

Lensaindonesia.com: After was found four people had suspected Avian Influenza, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Bojonegoro, East Java, immediately distribute 75 thousand doses of vaccine "Avian Influenza" (AI) in anticipation of the spread of a virus known as bird flu.

Head of Department of Livestock and Fisheries Bojonegoro Tukiwan Yusa said the distribution of 75 thousand doses of bird flu vaccine was conducted in 27 villages since last April.

According to him, the spread of the virus are known from the poultry farm poultry belonging to residents often sudden death. Because the suspect with the epidemic, people finally reported to the Department of Animal Husbandry and Fisheries Bojonegoro.
"To prevent the spread of the virus, we follow up with spraying chickens in the four villages," said Tukiwan, Friday (06/22/2012).

Four villages were among the Banjaranyar Village, Boereno Subdistrict, Pacul Village, City Subdistrict, Campurejo Village City Subdistrict, and Ngulanan Village, Dander Subdistrict.

For fear of impact on the surrounding conditions, Animal Husbandry and Fisheries officers also destroyed 650 quail birds in Ngulanan Village.

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by: bgw in MT @ Sat Jun 23, 2012 at 17:08:04 PM UTC

Please post new news stories to...

News Reports for June 24, 2012

Thank you!

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by: AlohaOR @ Sun Jun 24, 2012 at 04:43:41 AM UTC