H5N1 Primary Vector is Domestic Poultry

Technocrat

H5N1 Primary Vector is Domestic Poultry

zogger

Mon Sep 03 18:45:09 -0700 2007

Health+and+Medicine.

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According to research presented at a recent avian flu conference, H5N1 is just not spreading by wild birds to any measurable level, instead, it appears to be primarily humans and their domesticated birds, and perhaps that is where the occasional wild bird gets the virus from. They sampled hundreds of thousands of wild healthy birds and don't have any particularly risky species to point at.

.."Newman and others said the negative tests do not mean that wild birds should be dropped altogether as a possible transmission source. Instead, he said governments need to step up their surveillance of wild birds, including better testing at sites where domestic and wild birds congregate."..more, it's always the human's fault!11!, there

I call poor testing...

mengel

Tue Sep 04 11:05:40 -0700 2007
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It would appear these guys are simply using a testing mechanism which has been demonstrated not to work well, and then claiming the virus isn't present.

From recombinomics:
"The detection of H5N1 in Egypt in a healthy teal provided insight into the repeated negatives in live birds. Although the teal was PCR H5 positive, efforts to isolate the virus were unsuccessful. The RNA levels were low, so repeated extractions of RNA were required to generate a sequence. The sequence was clearly Qinghai, and was closely related to Qinghai isolates from Austria in 2006. The Egyptian sample was collected in December, 2005, when countries in western Europe and all of Africa claimed that there was no H5N1 in wild or domestic birds.

"Thus, the repeated negatives provide little information about the frequency of H5N1 in wild birds. The H5N1 in dead and dying wild birds in the same regions highlights the short-comings of the live bird assays. Other investigators, such as those in Russia, have no problem indentifying H5 sequences or antibodies in live wild birds.

"The focus of the conservation groups on assays that have significant sensitivity issues for the Qinghai strain of H5N1 in live wild birds, and the failure of these groups to use more sensitive assays, such as those that measure H5 antibodies, remain causes for concern."