United States: Transmission of bird flu and human flu simultaneously may bring about mutations of the new viruses that have adverse effects on the general public, agencies have said.
More about the news
This is after one mutation of bird flu was reported in a patient who contracted the disease in Louisiana and in a seriously ill teenager in Canada. These cases raised fears of an increased risk of spreading human infection, among others.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention noted on their website that Americans, those at high risk of bird flu, including farm workers, should take the flu vaccine this season even though it is only effective for seasonal flu.
According to the CDC, “This is because it can reduce the prevalence and severity of seasonal flu and might reduce the very rare risk of coinfection with a human seasonal virus and avian virus at the same time, and the theoretical risk that reassortment between the two could result in a new virus,” newsweek.com reported.
“This is because it can reduce the prevalence and severity of seasonal flu and might reduce the very rare risk of coinfection with a human seasonal virus and avian virus at the same time, and the theoretical risk that reassortment between the two could result in a new virus,” the CDC continued.
Detailed explaination
Some strains of bird flu and human flu are pretty close; bird flu, as it goes by its fuller name, avian influenza A(H5N1), is fairly similar to dominant strains of human flu such as influenza A(H1N1) and influenza A(H3N2).
This means that all three of these flu variants are Influenza A, which employs the Protein Acids Hemagglutinin (H) and Neuraminidase (N).
Dr Melanie Wellington, a Pediatric infectious diseases specialist at the University of Iowa, who is a member of Iowa’s Johnson County Board of Health, addressed a recent YouTube video by Johnson County Public Health on the risk of bird flu compounded with human flu.
She explained that “When a flu virus infects a cell, its genetic material goes in as multiple different segments or pieces,” newsweek.com reported.
“When it wants to make a new virus, it loads the new virus up with one copy of each piece, and If by chance a bird flu virus and a human flu virus infected the same cell, it would load one copy of each piece, but it wouldn’t be able to tell if those pieces had come from the bird virus or the human virus,” she continued.
Wellington said that when copies of the virus are made again, portions of segments may be taken from bird flu as well as human flu.