The Standard, "China's Business Newspaper":
H5N1 mutation appears closer
The greatest fear of health professionals across the globe - the mutation of the bird flu H5N1 virus into a form transmissible between humans - appears to be closer to happening, according to a Vietnamese research study.
Chester Yung
Monday, November 14, 2005
The greatest fear of health professionals across the globe - the mutation of the bird flu H5N1 virus into a form transmissible between humans - appears to be closer to happening, according to a Vietnamese research study.
Cao Bao Van, director of the Molecule Biology Department of the Pasteur Institute, Vietnam's center for bird flu research, was quoted by Reuters as saying 24 samples of the virus taken from poultry and humans showed significant changes, indicating it is mutating into a form that could trigger a pandemic.
Reuters reported that Van was quoted in a state-run online site as saying the study showed an "antigenic shift" involving major changes of influenza surface proteins. These changes could result in the appearance of pandemic flu viruses.
At present, the virus is not easily transmissible between humans.
Van was quoted as saying the study had also found that another mutation allows more effective breeding of the virus in mammals.
But Van said the study has not yet concluded whether the virus could move easily between people.
According to the World Health Organization, the next influenza pandemic is not a question of "if" but "when."
Klaus Stohr, coordinator of the WHO's global influenza program, was quoted in the Houston Chronicle Sunday as saying: "The fear is that the virus will become transmissible from human to human. This fear is real, it's scientifically substantiated, and we have enough historical data to tell us that the pandemic that would come out of this mutation would lead to a global health emergency, with millions of deaths, a global spread in less than three months and people in the developing countries being hardest hit.
"It'd be inappropriate and wrong to disregard these signals. The chances of it causing a pandemic are logarithmically higher than the chances of it not going to cause a pandemic."
Scientists from Hong Kong University and the Chinese University of Hong Kong are looking at a range of infectious diseases and searching for cheap diagnostic tests that will aid poorer nations to cope with any outbreak.
The HKU and CUHK gained grants of HK$30 million and HK$25 million, respectively, after the SARS outbreak in 2003 to tackle infectious diseases on the scientific front.
A team of HKU microbiologists, led by Prof Guan Yi, has already collected more than 100,000 samples from birds in South China and Southeast Asia and managed to sequence the genetic codes for more than 250 strains of H5N1 - indicating how widespread bird flu is in the region and how the virus is mutating.
The HKU scientists are also looking for the "best" virus in order to provide the "best" vaccine.
"Making a vaccine is only part of the solution. But to get there, we have to do a lot of research to find out what viruses there are and their differences," HKU Department of Microbiology professor Malik Peiris said.
Since the pandemic might not stem solely from the H5N1 virus, the CUHK team is focusing on the general prevention of infectious diseases.
It is also examining follow-up work with SARS patients, as this could provide significant reference in post-pandemic phase treatment.
"We are also looking to develop a cheaper way to diagnose and monitor diseases," said the director of the center for emerging infectious diseases, Prof Joseph Sung.
He said the current devices used for diagnostic tests cost millions of dollars and may be beyond the reach of poor countries, making early detection and isolation of any pandemic more difficult.
Sung said the CUHK is also examining the social and economic impact of infectious diseases.
As such, the psychological impact on SARS patients during rehabilitation is worth studying, Sung said, noting that the relevant study of the social and economic impact of infectious diseases can offer the government a bigger picture and help it formulate public health policy.
Many medical experts agree Hong Kong is better prepared for the next pandemic than many countries because of its SARS experience. Yet vaccine production remains a major concern in Hong Kong and throughout the world.
Peiris suggested that, as Hong Kong has one of the leading laboratories in the world, it could play a major role.
"We have the technology to make vaccines, but it doesn't help because we need to have a pharmaceutical industry to support it," he said.
"Singapore [and Taiwan have] put a huge amount of effort into building up a pharmaceutical industry. In this respect, Hong Kong is miles behind."
Currently, only a few companies in the world can develop vaccines for testing - Sanofi-Pasteur (France), Chiron Corp (US), ID Biomedical (Canada) and MedImmune (US).
The Chinese biotech company Sinovac is reportedly testing an H5N1 vaccine based on an influenza strain provided by the WHO in 2004.
During the global summit on bird flu in Geneva last week, WHO experts reported that about 900 million doses of H5N1 vaccine would be available within eight months of a pandemic breaking out. Meanwhile, Indonesia said a woman died of suspected bird flu Saturday, AFP reported. Jakarta's infectious diseases hospital spokesman Dr Ilham Patu said she lived close to a flock of backyard chickens that died suddenly. |
