A strain of flu that has been circulating in pigs for decades is now capable of sickening humans and could cause to a pandemic similar to the one swine flu caused in 2009, a new study found.
A team of researchers from China and Japan recently found that a type of swine flu virus called EAH1N1 is now capable of sickening humans on a global scale, and published their discovery in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The researchers wrote that the virus has been found in pigs since 1979, but “long-term evolution” in the animals have changed the virus and it’s now capable of not just making humans sick, but efficiently spreading between them.
The researchers warned EAH1N1 is now able “to cause a human influenza pandemic.” Their research indicated that several countries have already reported human cases of the illness.
The study “suggests that immediate action is needed” to prevent humans from getting the EAH1N1 virus, researchers wrote in the article’s summary, because of how it can spread and the fact that none of the humans they tested had developed antibodies for one particular flu strain.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated that the 2009 swine flu outbreak, caused by the different H1N1 virus, killed anywhere between 151,700 and 575,400 people.
The World Health Organization says pigs have been known to generate new flu viruses because they are capable of getting infected by several different animals and humans. The viruses blend together in pigs, creating new strains that can make humans sicker than the original viruses.
The outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in Africa is growing into more of a concern for world leaders.
Mali reported their first possible cases of Ebola since the beginning of an outbreak in neighboring Guinea. Government officials have isolated three people in Mali as they await confirmation testing from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.
Guinea reported their 90th death from the outbreak leading Doctors Without Borders to say this could become an unprecedented epidemic in a region that has extremely poor health care systems.
The outbreak has reached a point that foreign mining companies in Guinea have closed their operations and pulled their employees to their home nations. French officials say they are preparing screening at the airports for travels from the former French colonies.
In addition to Guinea, confirmed cases have been found in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Liberia confirmed three new deaths in the last 24 hours bringing their total to four.
DWB officials are concerned with the dense living conditions in cities where the virus has been found because it will be hard to stop the virus should it break out in a crowded living area.
The H1N1 virus, which killed over 14,000 people in a 2009 global pandemic, has returned with a vengeance in the 2013-14 flu season.
The Centers for Disease Control says that for the first time since that 2009 outbreak, H1N1 has been killing victims at an epidemic level.
The CDC says that the death toll is only a fraction of the 2009 outbreak but that levels are significantly higher than previous years. With six weeks to go in the flu season, some states have seen more than a nine-fold increase in deaths. California has 243 deaths this year compared to 26 at this time last year.
Some California hospitals have been so overrun with flu patients that they have set up triage units in their parking lots to keep infected patients away from potentially immunosuppressed patients in the main hospital building.
Many Californians rushed to get flu shots after a woman who worked for Sacramento’s ABC TV affiliate died from H1N1 within four days of feeling ill.
The CDC also says that surveillance reports in Virginia and Maryland show a wide outbreak of H1N1 but they along with the District of Columbia do not record deaths from the flu.
Duke University Medical Center reported a disturbing trend in that most hospitalized flu patients were younger, an average age of 28.5, and had more significant complications than in previous H1N1 outbreaks.
A new report on deaths linked to the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic shows the total number of deaths to be more than ten times higher than reported by the World Health Organization.
The study also discovered that respiratory deaths in the Americas can be 20 times higher than the death rates in Europe.
Examining only deaths from pneumonia that could have been connected to the flu, the study showed Mexico, Argentina and Brazil had the highest death rates from the pandemic. The toll was significantly lower in New Zealand, Australia and in most of Europe.
“[The report] confirms that the H1N1 virus killed many more people globally than originally believed,” study author Lone Simonsen of George Washington University said. “We also found that the mortality burden of this pandemic fell most heavily on younger people and those living in certain parts of the Americas.”
The World Health Organization said in 2010 the death toll from H1N1 was around 18,500 but noted their total was limited to laboratory confirmed testing.
Scientists are warning that H5N1, the “Bird Flu”, could change into a form that would pass easily and rapidly through humans.
Researchers reported in the journal of Medicine that five genetic changes have been identified that could allow the virus to cause a lethal human pandemic. Continue reading →