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First recent US case of human bird flu confirmed in Colorado

A Colorado prison inmate has become the first person in the U.S. to test positive for bird flu in a recent outbreak that has led to the deaths of millions of chickens and turkeys, but federal officials say they still see ...

France culls over 600,000 poultry in new bird flu outbreak

France has culled 600,000 to 650,000 chickens, ducks and other poultry over the past month, officials said Friday, in a race to contain a bird flu virus threatening to become the fourth major outbreak in the country since ...

Poultry in lockdown after Belgium detects bird flu

Belgium ordered its poultry into lockdown from Monday after detecting a case of bird flu in a wild duck, extending avian quarantine measures already in place in neighbouring countries.

Intensive farming increases risk of epidemics, warn scientists

Overuse of antibiotics, high animal numbers and low genetic diversity caused by intensive farming techniques increase the likelihood of pathogens becoming a major public health risk, according to new research led by UK scientists.

What blocks bird flu in human cells?

Normally, bird flu viruses do not spread easily from person to person. But if this does happen, it could trigger a pandemic. Researchers from the MDC and RKI have now explained in the journal Nature Communications what makes ...

Fullerene compounds knock out virus infections like HIV and HSV

Scientists from the Skoltech Center for Energy Science and Technology and the Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics of RAS in collaboration with researchers from four other Russian and foreign research centers have discovered ...

Virulence factor of the influenza A virus mapped in real-time

The influenza A viruses, which are responsible for deadly pandemics in the past, still remain a major global public health problem today. Molecules known as virulence factors are produced by bacteria, viruses, and fungi to ...

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Influenza A virus subtype H5N1

Influenza A virus subtype H5N1, also known as "bird flu," A(H5N1) or simply H5N1, is a subtype of the Influenza A virus which can cause illness in humans and many other animal species. A bird-adapted strain of H5N1, called HPAI A(H5N1) for "highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type A of subtype H5N1", is the causative agent of H5N1 flu, commonly known as "avian influenza" or "bird flu". It is enzootic in many bird populations, especially in Southeast Asia. One strain of HPAI A(H5N1) is spreading globally after first appearing in Asia. It is epizootic (an epidemic in nonhumans) and panzootic (affecting animals of many species, especially over a wide area), killing tens of millions of birds and spurring the culling of hundreds of millions of others to stem its spread. Most references to "bird flu" and H5N1 in the popular media refer to this strain.

According to the FAO Avian Influenza Disease Emergency Situation Update, H5N1 pathogenicity is continuing to gradually rise in endemic areas but the avian influenza disease situation in farmed birds is being held in check by vaccination. Eleven outbreaks of H5N1 were reported worldwide in June 2008 in five countries (China, Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam) compared to 65 outbreaks in June 2006 and 55 in June 2007. The "global HPAI situation can be said to have improved markedly in the first half of 2008 [but] cases of HPAI are still underestimated and underreported in many countries because of limitations in country disease surveillance systems".

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