ZKEA

Biological Warfare : Biological Terrorism : Emerging Diseases

Archived News
Week ending March 12th, 2006

The first reports of bird flu that cropped up in recent days in widely separated countries - India, Egypt and France - highlighted the disease's accelerating spread to new territories.

International health experts have been predicting widespread dissemination of the disease for about half a year, since they concluded that it could be spread by migrating birds. But the recent acceleration has perplexed many experts, who had watched the A(H5N1) virus stick to its native ground in Asia for nearly five years.

The most alarming of the current outbreaks, if only for sheer size, were the two widely separated episodes of avian flu in India, one of which has killed 50,000 birds in poultry flocks in the last few days. The Indian government, which has long been on alert for the virus because that country is on many migration paths in Asia, began killing half a million birds in the hopes of quashing the outbreaks, officials announced Sunday.

But the most perplexing report involved the single case in France - a wild duck found dead in the suburbs of Lyon - because migratory birds from Asia that carry the virus do not normally travel there at this time of year.

"After several years in one place, why is it now moving so rapidly?" asked Dr. Samuel Jutzi, director of the Animal Production and Health Division at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. "There is a lot about this that we just don't know."

The dead duck in France, he said, was "very odd, very difficult to explain." But he added, "What is known is that the width of flyways are very broad, and there may have been a swarm that went farther westward than normal."

In Western Europe, the disease has been confined to wild migratory birds, and authorities across the Continent were taking severe measures ...

A domestic cat in Germany has become the first European Union mammal to die of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu. The cat was found dead at the weekend on the Baltic island of Ruegen, where dozens of birds infected with H5N1 have been found. Further north, Sweden has detected "aggressive" bird flu in two wild ducks and is testing to confirm H5N1.

Meanwhile, vets from 50 countries have been meeting in Paris for a second day to discuss ways to combat the virus. The H5N1 infection in the German cat was confirmed by officials at the national laboratory, the Friedrich Loeffler Institute, but tests are continuing to determine if it is the exact strain that has been found in birds.

Laboratory chief Thomas Mettenleiter said pet owners on the island should keep cats inside for the time being. Cats have been known to contract the virus from eating infected birds. Three rare civet cats in Vietnam died of bird flu last August. In October 2004, dozens of tigers died at a private zoo in Thailand after a bird flu outbreak.

There are no recorded cases of cat-to-human infection, but the German finding will raise concerns of further cross-species transmission. In Sweden, the agriculture ministry said the virus detected in the ducks in the Oskarshamn region, 150 miles (250km) south of Stockholm, was a "highly pathogenic" version of the H5 virus that kills only birds.

The ministry said it suspected it would turn out to be H5N1, which can kill humans.

"This means that we have bird flu in Sweden. It's serious, but not unexpected," Agriculture Minister Ann-Christin Nykvist said.

At the Paris headquarters of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), chief veterinary officers from Europe, Iran, Kuwait and Azerbaijan have met to discuss how to co-ordinate their response to the spread of the disease...

urope's "Little Ice Age" may have been triggered by the 14th Century Black Death plague, according to a new study.

Pollen and leaf data support the idea that millions of trees sprang up on abandoned farmland, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This would have had the effect of cooling the climate, a team from Utrecht University, Netherlands, says.

The Little Ice Age was a period of some 300 years when Europe experienced a dip in average temperatures.

Dr Thomas van Hoof and his colleagues studied pollen grains and leaf remains collected from lake-bed sediments in the southeast Netherlands.

Monitoring the ups and downs in abundance of cereal pollen (like buckwheat) and tree pollen (like birch and oak) enabled them to estimate changes in land-use between AD 1000 and 1500.

The team found an increase in cereal pollen from 1200 onwards (reflecting agricultural expansion), followed by a sudden dive around 1347, linked to the agricultural crisis caused by the arrival of the Black Death, most probably a bacterial disease spread by rat fleas.

This bubonic plague is said to have wiped out over a third of Europe's population.

Counting stomata (pores) on ancient oak leaves provided van Hoof's team with a measure of the fluctuations in atmospheric carbon dioxide for the same period.

This is because leaves absorb carbon dioxide through their stomata, and their density varies as carbon dioxide goes up and down.

"Between AD 1200 to 1300, we see a decrease in stomata and a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to deforestation we think," says Dr van Hoof, whose findings are published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

But after AD 1350, the team found the pattern reversed, suggesting that atmospheric carbon dioxide fell, perhaps due to reforestation following the plague...

f this were a creepy thriller, the camera might pan across the sky following a lone wild duck and then drop to the silent fields below before moving into the crowded, cacophonous sheds where the Bresse region's famous free-range chickens are now sequestered, waiting out the deadly threat of bird flu passing overhead.

France, the first European country to suffer an outbreak of the A(H5N1) strain of avian influenza among its poultry, is hunkering down for a long, tense haul as the spring migration brings flocks of waterfowl to its rivers, lakes and ponds.

The virus, which killed more than 400 turkeys in a matter of hours on a farm a few miles south of here, is believed to have arrived with a duck that migrated west from the Black Sea to escape unusually cold weather there.

If so, the real threat, many experts fear, may come in the weeks ahead as pintail, garganey and shoveler ducks begin arriving from their wintering grounds in Africa, where the virus has already spread among poultry. The annual migration toward northern breeding grounds is expected to last until the end of May.

"We're not fatalists, but we're anxious," said Michel Pont, a chicken farmer here who raises the famous snowy white Bresse chickens that are considered the crown jewels of the French poultry industry.

There are many indications that migratory birds are not the only - or even the primary - reason the virus has moved beyond Asia.

Experts have noted that the pattern of infections marching westward follows railway lines more closely than the birds' predominantly northwest flyways. Exported Asian chicken manure, used in everything from fishponds to poultry feed to fertilizer spread on fields, may have contributed to the spread. Even the crates in which chickens are shipped may carry the virus, some scientists assert...

Louisiana, struggling to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina, now faces a potential scourge of mosquitoes as insects hatch in storm-created breeding grounds, scientists said on Monday.

The expected surge in the mosquito population this summer around New Orleans raises worries about the risk of an accompanying increase in cases of the mosquito-borne West Nile virus, public health officials said.

"The mosquitoes have just taken off," said Janet McAllister, an entomologist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

McAllister was one of several officials who spoke at a Detroit meeting of the American Mosquito Control Association, where a special session was devoted to the government response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

The problem has been compounded by the relatively warm winter in New Orleans, said McAllister, a native of New Orleans who worked in the city's insect control program before joining the CDC.

North of New Orleans, downed trees are blocking drainage channels, and marsh plants churned up by the autumn hurricanes have created new breeding grounds for mosquitoes, said Chuck Palmisano, director of mosquito abatement in St. Tammany Parish.

"We still don't know what this is going to mean, but we believe it is going to increase breeding," said Palmisano.

Meanwhile, massive trailer parks set up for Katrina refugees pose new problems, said Randy Vaeth, a biologist who works for East Baton Rouge Parish.

Public health officials have no good way of notifying the residents of the trailer parks that they are planning to spray pesticides and to warn them to stay indoors, he said.

In addition, wastewater treatment plants set up to deal with the thousands of displaced residents are proving to be rich mosquito breeding grounds, he said.

McAllister said hastily organized U.S. Air Force flights to spray insecticide to control mosquitoes and to kill the "filth flies" breeding in New Orleans garbage heaps were a rare success amid the chaos that followed Katrina...

Avian flu, which has hit a French poultry farm, will probably spread to domestic flocks in other European states, experts said on Tuesday, as Sweden became the latest country to report an outbreak.

Birds from East African neighbors Kenya and Ethiopia were being tested for the H5N1 bird flu strain, which can also infect humans, as the virus extends its rapid spread around the globe.

"The spread of the infection to domestic poultry in other European and neighboring countries is highly likely and may even be made worse by the arrival in Europe of possibly infected birds from Africa and the Middle East next spring," the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) said.

France has already confirmed the first outbreak of the H5N1 virus at a farm in the European Union. The news has prompted some countries to ban French poultry, and fears over bird flu are hitting consumption in a number of countries.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) cut its estimate for global poultry consumption by around 3 million tons to 81.8 million tons.

Cases in wild birds have appeared across Europe, the latest in Sweden which said on Tuesday it had detected its first cases of an "aggressive form of bird flu" -- though it was not yet confirmed as the deadly H5N1 strain -- in two wild ducks.

"The virus has been found in wild birds in the region of Oskarshamn (on Sweden's southeast coast)," the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry said it appeared to be the same strain as detected in Russia and China, both of which have been hit by outbreaks of H5N1, but that was still to be confirmed.

The H5N1 virus has been detected in around 20 new countries over the past month alone, crossing into Europe and Africa. The virus is endemic in birds across parts of Asia. It has led to the culling or deaths of some 200 million birds...

It all began with what looked like a spider bite on Eileen Moore's left thigh. Nothing to worry about, she figured.

Within 24 hours, the "bite" became a 6-inch welt with a bubble of pus that eventually ripened into a black wound. Over the next few months, scabs dotted her face. A hangnail caused her middle finger to bloat like a sausage. Her pierced ears oozed pus.

The cause of Moore's ordeal was a bacterium known as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which in its most severe form can turn into a fatal flesh-destroying scourge.

For decades, the infections were found only in hospitals, where the constant use of different antibiotics, including the potent methicillin, made it resistant to many of the most powerful antibiotics.

In the last few years, it has emerged in gyms, jails, schools ┠and just about anywhere bacteria can grow. It has become a simmering problem that is largely unknown by the general population.

"I would characterize it as widespread, and in some areas it is epidemic," said Jeff Hageman, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a coauthor of two studies on staph published last year.

There are few statistics on the disease, because resistant staph infections are not routinely reported to the CDC. But one study published last year in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases estimated there were about 126,000 cases from 1999 to 2000 - twice the number of hepatitis B cases each year.

"The rapidity with which this has emerged over the last two to three years is probably unprecedented," said Donald Low, a microbiologist at the University of Toronto who was one of the key scientists who dealt with Toronto's SARS outbreak in 2003. "When you look at the numbers, this way outstrips other so-called new infectious diseases."

Its victims are legion.

Five football players with the St. Louis Rams developed lesions on their elbows, forearms or knees, where turf burns had opened up their skin in 2003. Players from a competing team also developed sores after playing against the Rams...

France began vaccinating more than 300,000 geese and ducks against avian flu on Monday while Niger became the second West African country to be hit by a virus which is spreading among birds at unprecedented speed.

Tests on domestic ducks from Niger have shown positive results for the H5N1 bird flu virus, the World Animal Health Organization (OIE) said. Neighboring Nigeria has already been hit by bird flu in poultry.

The Black Sea state of Georgia said it had found the H5N1 strain in wild swans as the virus, which is endemic in birds in parts of Asia, extends its sweep across the globe.

As many as 18 new countries have reported outbreaks in birds over the past month.

Ilaria Capua, a top European expert on avian influenza with the OIE, said the spread of the virus to the wild bird population has meant the situation in Europe was now akin "to living under machine-gun fire".

"And the spring migration from Africa will make us even more exposed," she said. "This is the first time in history that it (bird flu) has been widespread in wild birds," she added.

The virus has killed more than 90 people in Asia and the Middle East since late 2003. It remains essentially an animal disease which humans contract only through close contact with infected birds.

However, there are fears the virus could mutate into a form that passes easily from person to person, sparking a pandemic in which millions could die. France started the vaccination campaign in the department of the Landes, in the southwest of the country, one of the areas deemed to be at risk...

As new outbreaks of bird flu have peppered Europe and Africa in the last few weeks, experts are realizing that they do not fully understand how migrating birds disseminate the H5N1 virus, leaving the continents vulnerable to unexpected outbreaks.

Just after new scientific research clarified the role of wild birds in spreading H5N1 out of its original territory in southern China, the virus promptly moved into dozens of locations in Europe and Africa, following no apparent pattern and underlining how little scientists actually know.

In fact, current knowledge of how H5N1 is spreading in Europe and Africa is so rudimentary that experts say there is absolutely no way of predicting where it will strike next - although they are now certain that it will, again and again.

"We know next to nothing about this virus; we have only anecdotal information about where it exists and what birds it infects," said Vittorio Guberti, head veterinarian at the Italian National Institute for Wildlife, who has devoted his career to studying influenza in wild birds. "We don't even know where to focus. We have to sit and wait for the big epidemic to occur, and in the meantime there will probably be small outbreaks all the time."

Scientists do not know, for example, which species are the major carriers of H5N1. While they suspect that there may be a few areas at the fringes of Europe that are perpetually infected with H5N1, they are not sure exactly where. And while they are convinced that the virus can be carried on trucks, shoes and in fertilizer, they are not sure how important that route is.

Until this year, Europe's small fraternity of wild bird researchers, like Guberti, was severely underfinanced, its warnings about bird flu unheeded. Now they are racing to fill in gaps in knowledge and answer crucial questions. "Think about this," Guberti said in his cluttered laboratory here. In March, "two million ducks from Nigeria, where there is a big problem, will arrive in Italy. And we don't know a thing about them." Outbreaks in Nigeria have occurred in commercial poultry, but there is no information about whether the disease is in wild birds. Samples from African birds have been shipped to the official United Nations laboratory in Padua, Italy, for analysis, but they are "waiting on a shelf" because the lab is overwhelmed by samples from Europe now ...