Much Ado About Avian Flu Theory

Even if recently the avian flu kept the headlines of all newspapers and other media, being of first interest for both scientists and common people, new researches show that an avian influenza pandemic is not that likely to occur.

The study was carried out on ferrets and consisted in combining the bird flu with a common human strain. Researchers wanted to find out if the combination of the two strains would lead to the creation of a pandemic virus in the animals. Results showed that a damaging, pandemic virus failed to form in the bodies of the ferrets. This is a highly important discovery, as it proves that the outbreak of a pandemic strain is not that imminent as previously thought.

Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, stated a few days ago: "Simple combinations of genes from both parent viruses have not led to enhanced transmissibility in the ferret. These data do not mean that H5N1 cannot develop into a pandemic strain. It means that the genetics of that transformation are more complicated than a simple one-to-one exchange. We are far from out of the woods on a global scale."

Dr. Marc Siegel, professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine and author of the book Bird Flu: Everything You Need to Know About the Next Pandemic, also pointed out that the previous worries about a bird flu pandemic have been "much ado about theory, about something speculative. This does add emphasis to my previous analyses that multiple steps may be necessary before this particular bird flu can become a pandemic strain, and we would be wise to not take those steps for granted. This doesn't prove that H5N1 can't be the pandemic virus either, but it shows that there seem to be several steps involved."

Government researchers combine a 1997 version of the H5N1 virus with the H3N2 common virus that affects a great number of people every winter. "The research was undertaken to better understand what changes are needed for H5N1 to acquire the properties of efficient transmissibility. The most important thing is the knowledge that this process isn't simple, and it's a complex procedure for a virus to acquire the properties of transmissibility," co-researcher Jacqueline Katz stated.