Nature Newspublic-health experts are warning that a lack of surveillance may be allowing the 2009 pandemic H1n1 flu virus to go undetected in pigs.
Their main concern tends to be that any reports of the pandemic virus in pigs might provoke overreactions such as the mass culling of pigs that took place in Egypt
Within minutes of the World health organization (WHO) announcement on 11 june that swine flu had become a pandemic, Bernard Vallat, director-general of an intergovernmental trade body,
and his colleagues concluded that the lack of systematic swine surveillance allowed for the undetected persistence and evolution of this potentially pandemic strain for many years.
The pandemic virus has so far been found in pigs from just one farm, in Alberta, Canada,
Past pandemic viruses have gone also on to become endemic in pig populations. It's absolutely surprising that a virus this contagious in both humans and swine
Absence of evidence of the pandemic virus in pig populations is not evidence of absence,
however its member states to voluntarily report any occurrences of the 2009 pandemic virus in pigs.
Network members hope that with the pandemic highlighting the need for better pig surveillance new funding will be forthcoming.
-and public-health communities underestimated the potential for pigs to generate a pandemic virus . Although pigs can be infected with many subtypes of flu,
Most expected that any new pandemic would involve the introduction of a viral subtype not previously seen in humans,
The consensus was that a pandemic could not be caused by H1, H2 or H3 because the current human population would have antibodies against them,
The emergence of the reassorted H1n1 pandemic virus which current research indicates noone has any immunity to, apart, perhaps,
Pandemic flu viruses brew for years before going global: Nature Newsfamily trees for pandemic influenza have revealed that components of deadly flu viruses probably lurk in humans
and other animals for years before they emerge as a worldwide threat to human health.
The work suggests that a more thorough characterization of circulating flu viruses could provide clues to an emerging pandemic before it hits.
ultimately giving rise to the dangerous assortment of genes carried by the 1918 virus. This work suggests that the generation of pandemic strains
is key to identifying possible pandemic strains and their future evolution. Yi Guan of the University of Hong kong, Robert Webster of St jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee,
and then swapped genes with mammalian flu viruses before becoming a pandemic. Meanwhile, elements of the 1957 pandemic flu virus also thought to be a mosaic of human
and avian flu genes were introduced probably into human populations two to six years before the pandemic, the researchers found.
These analyses were completed before the current pandemic swine flu strain made its mark, but the researchers argue that their results have implications for future pandemics.
Results from 1918 and 1957 pandemic flu suggest that public-health authorities should track the sequences of all influenza virus genes in emerging strains
the authors argue, rather than focusing largely on the gene that encodes the haemagglutinin'protein,
which is critical for vaccine production, as is the current practice. Nevertheless, reliance upon patchy data from historical flu viruses has its limitations.
Swine flu shares some features with 1918 pandemic: Nature Newsas far as your immune system is concerned, the pandemic H1n1 (swine flu virus currently circling the globe bears an uncanny resemblance to an influenza virus that wreaked havoc nearly a century ago,
researchers have found. For months, it has been apparent that swine flu strikes the young more often than the old an unusual pattern that suggests older patients could have been exposed to similar viruses in the past.
are effective against the new pandemic virus in human cells grown in the lab. These drugs are already being used to treat some infected patients.
and the severity of the present pandemic does not come close to the 1918 flu, but experts worry that the new virus could become more virulent over time.
Pandemic flu: People infected with the H1n1 swine flu virus who are otherwise healthy should not routinely be given antiviral drugs,
) Environment Mercury contamination: A quarter of fish sampled from 291 streams across the United states between 1998 and 2005 contained levels of mercury higher than those deemed safe for human consumption,
It's really getting to a systems-level understanding of the mountain pine beetle epidemic, says study co-author JÃ rg Bohlmann, a chemical ecologist at the University of British columbia in Vancouver, Canada,
But researchers say that past landrace contaminations from illegal GM maize planting (see Nature 456,149;
citing the potential contamination of native maize: It is very, very unacceptable. See also'Maize genome sequenced'.
which handles samples of H1n1 pandemic flu, and which earlier this year lost track of 22 vials containing harmless Ebola-virus genetic material.
Pandemic over: The World health organization (WHO) announced on 10 august that the world is no longer experiencing an H1n1 influenza virus pandemic.
An emergency committee, which convened that day, said that countries were generally not reporting out-of-season outbreaks of the flu strain,
director-general of THE WHO, said the pandemic had turned out better than feared because the virus hadn't mutated into a more lethal form
preventing contamination that could otherwise cast doubt on the analysis. Boaretto explains that she is on site
Events Cholera in Haiti The escalating cholera epidemic in Haiti had claimed more than 900 lives and caused close to 15,000 infections by the start of this week, according to the Haitian Ministry of Public health and Population.
Epidemics are currently raging in the United kingdom and United states, and the oomycete annually destroys more than US$6 billion worth of crops worldwide.
The agency would also have to identify the most significant contaminants and issue science-based guidance on how to fight them.
Trend watch Growth of the global AIDS epidemic seems to have stabilized, said the UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) on 23 november (see chart).
for any contamination of their neighbours'non-GM fields. The Federal Constitutional Court said on 24 november that the 2004 (amended in 2008) legislation,
Virus sharing In the event of a future flu pandemic, member states of the World health organization (WHO) will send samples of flu virus to laboratories and drug makers around the world,
The team then plugged those concentrations into a piece of software called ERICA (Environmental Risk from Ionising Contaminants) to calculate the radiation dose that various groups of wildlife would have received.
Research Cholera in Haiti The cholera epidemic currently raging through Haiti was introduced inadvertently to the country through faecal contamination of river water,
during an epidemic, culling on farms that are at risk of infection could be unnecessary.
Pathogenic E coli are passed typically to humans from ruminant animals (cows or sheep) via faecal contamination in the food chain or through consumption of raw milk or meat products.
measuring contamination levels and assessing the long-term threat. Their first results, to appear in the Japanese journal Radioisotopes in August,
with combined levels of caesium-134 and caesium-137 ranging from thousands to about 1 Â million Bq kg-1. But leaves that unfolded afterwards were largely free of contamination.
Without data on the true depth of soil contamination, local schools are using large machines to scoop up the top 50 Â centimetres of soil probably much more than is necessary
West africans at risk from bat epidemics: Nature Newsserious viruses carried by bats pose a considerable risk to people in West Africa,
and his colleagues fear that the next big epidemic could come from henipaviruses, which can cause fatal encephalitis or respiratory disease in humans.
In its Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 20111, the World health organization provides statistics from multiple countries showing that packet warnings,
whether the public-health benefits of the work outweigh the risks of a potential pandemic if the virus escaped from the lab. For the scientists who have created the mutated strains of the H5n1 virus,
and other animals for the mutations that would provide an early warning of a pandemic
and that it sends a valuable warning about the potential for the virus to spark a human pandemic.
Scientists contacted By nature say that basic research on such mutated strains may eventually yield insight relevant to developing pandemic countermeasures such as drugs and vaccines.
which are only capable of supplying vaccine six months after a pandemic starts, and of producing enough vaccine for a small fraction of the world population.
"In order to even consider the possibility of reducing the animal reservoir of an emerging pandemic virus,
or years after they are collected hardly the swift turnaround of a pandemic alert system.""Could we pick up a mutation in real time
and stop a pandemic? asks Capua.""Not with the surveillance we have now. Source: Genbankmoreover, if H5n1 surveillance in poultry is poor,
Yet pigs are a likely source of a human pandemic H5n1 virus because they are susceptible to both human
But even if a candidate pandemic H5n1 virus was detected in poultry, culling flocks to eliminate it would be no mean feat.
H5n1 is far from being the only flu virus that poses a pandemic threat. But he believes that more extensive genetic surveillance could eventually pay off."
Timely global surveillance of animal flu viruses is crucial not just for identifying pandemic threats,
because"H5n1 is not the sole pandemic candidate, and low pathogenic viruses are just as likely, if not more likely,
to become pandemic. The number of avian flu sequences deposited in the database skyrocketed between 2003 and 2010,
Yet pigs are a serious pandemic risk: they can be infected co with both human and avian flu strains,
the emergence of pandemic strains such as the 2009 H1n1 pandemic virus. The world is home to some 1 billion domestic pigs, almost half
The pandemic risk posed by pigs has risen also since 2009. The 2009 pandemic H1n1 virus,
which is now endemic in pigs, is unusual in that it contains the triple reassortant internal gene (TRIG) cassette,
a highly conserved set of six genes that allows the virus to swap genes with flu viruses from other species much more freely than the seasonal H1n1 that circulated before 2009 (see Pandemic 2009 H1n1 virus gives wings to avian flu).
but"we are noting lots of reassortment between the pandemic virus and endemic swine viruses, says Peiris.
Farmers say it is impossible to avoid growing GM soya because of contamination, and in April they won a challenge in the state of Rio grande do Sul,
because it contains a gene from the H1n1 pandemic strain that may increase transmissibility among humans.
2009), but was retracted in 2011 because of concerns that the results were caused by contamination. The latest study (H.  J.  Alter et  al. mbio 3, e00266-12;
triggering a global pandemic, reminded us of the need to monitor animals such as pigs that can host the development of dangerous viral strains.
Like that responsible for the 2009 pandemic, the new strain, known as Sw/1204, is a'triple-reassortant'virus that is, one with genes from avian, swine and human flu.
Choi wanted to assess the pandemic potential of Korean strains. His team tested two H1n2
and two H3n2 viruses isolated from pig abattoirs before the 2009 pandemic. Most of these viruses did not cause any signs of serious disease in ferrets.
but not transmissibility, in the pandemic H1n1 strain. NA315N has also been found before, but its role is less clear.
global pandemics and/or deliberate biological attacks? To further improve preparedness, we must continue to invest in the best public health monitoring systems that can be built.
bolstered surveillance used to detect contamination problems earlier, and responded to illness outbreaks faster. I am also working to bolster the use of organic farming methods
because they provide the greatest control over the potential risks of contamination and are generally the most cost-effective.
but industry officials continue to question the source of the contamination. see go. nature. com/xzorhp for more. UK funding boost The UK government will add £200 million (US$321 million to a fund to promote research partnerships between universities and industry,
when he heard the identity of the pathogen in the epidemic that originated with the New england Compounding Center pharmacy in Framingham, Mass."
"If a small number of trees have survived the very intense epidemic in Demark, then there is hope for us here,
where it is required to provide local solutions to the epidemics, he says
Obama rekindles climate hopesthroughout his reelection campaign, US President Barack Obama rarely said the words climate change.
One of the two proposed regulations requires food makers to develop plans for preventing contamination;
and food safety groups are concerned about contamination of food crops with products from a new generation of crops engineered to produce chemicals or pharmaceuticals.
an animal epidemic that has spread abroad, or the international spread of a partially or fully human-adapted virus. Maps presented are for data-visualization purposes only;
Maryland. go. nature. com/wfnyw227-30 april Flu pandemics, the resurgence of measles and antimicrobial resistance are discussed all at the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
or morph into a virus that can spread easily between people and spark a deadly pandemic.
If a pandemic were to occur, it would probably have a severe toll. But it is too early to predict how events will unfold;
potentially sparking a pandemic. Scientists stress that it is much too early to do a full risk assessment of the potential pandemic threat.
But the initial analysis of viral sequences is"worrisome because they show several features that are suggestive of adaptation to humans,
This is in contrast to the 2009 H1n1 pandemic virus, which was a mix of viruses that infect birds, pigs and humans.
Ireland s dependence on potatoes was the reason the epidemic exacted a far greater toll there than it did on the rest of the continent.
But Dominique Berteaux, an Arctic ecologist at the University of Quebec in Rimouski, Canada, cautions that the team has not definitively proved a link between mercury contamination
because they fear contamination of the wild stock and worry that it could drive down the price of farmed salmon.
They classified streams according to three different levels of pesticide contamination: uncontaminated, slightly contaminated and highly contaminated.
Deadly pig virus slips through US bordersthe pathogen, a type of coronavirus called porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV),
and it caused mass epidemics in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. As pigs there developed immunity, the virus petered out and now causes only occasional, isolated outbreaks.
and could become an epidemic (see Pig virus on the wing). SOURCE: US Department of agriculture"It s a real threat, says Lisa  Becton, a veterinary surgeon and director of swine health information at the National Pork Board, an industry group in Des Â
and with the contamination proving to be isolated an event, imports into South korea have resumed. But as an army of combines marches across the wheat fields of eastern Oregon, the mystery of the transgenic intruders is fresh in the minds of investigators at the US Department of agriculture (USDA),
Now, the USDA investigators are sifting through hundreds of markers to try to match the genetic signature of the contaminant Oregon wheat with one of the varieties from the 256 field tests registered with the USDA.
Monsanto has made already clear its favoured explanation for the contamination: sabotage.""There are folks who don t like biotechnology
Fraley argues that the distribution of the contaminant plants suggests that a human hand cast them there.
If, for example, the contaminant was a spring wheat plant in a winter wheat field, the transgenic wheat would flower
which caused a pandemic among humans in 2009. In the study, H1n1 infected more cells
"That s the biggest hope we have of ending the tobacco epidemic. But as big tobacco companies have piled into a market worth more than US$2 billion worldwide,
The results suggest that mass epidemics may spark from a complicated intermingling of bacteria between animals and humans and from exchanges between different countries
when global epidemics of drug-resistant salmonella infections began to arise. Livestock was assumed to be the source of the epidemics
because animals naturally harbour the bacteria. To find out whether this was really the case, the team used whole-genome sequencing to trace the tiny evolutionary steps of the collected bacterial strains.
because the epidemics were international. He notes however, that, to eliminate the possibility of a domestically derived outbreak,
Pig virus spreads Canada confirmed its first case of porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus on 23 Â January.
It caused mass epidemics in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s. Last spring, the United states reported its first case (see Nature 499,388;
But the surge in H7n9 flu cases highlights the continuing public-health and possibly pandemic threat that it poses.
Study revives bird origin for 1918 flu pandemicthe virus that caused the 1918 influenza pandemic probably sprang from North american domestic and wild birds, not from the mixing of human and swine viruses.
pigs and bats using a model they developed to map evolutionary relationships between viruses from different host species. The branched tree that resulted showed that the genes of the deadly 1918 pandemic virus are of avian origin.
A 2005 genetic analysis of the 1918 pandemic virus pulled from a victim s preserved tissue concluded that it most closely matched viruses of avian origin2.
and swine for at least 2 to 15 years before the pandemic and combined to make the lethal virus. Gavin Smith, an evolutionary biologist at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical school at the National University of Singapore,
"Transmission between horses and humans seems to have been key to some epidemics when horses were an intimate part of our lives,
The thermal decontamination is done at extremely high temperatures. There are precursor chemicals which are used the components to make a chemical weapon that aren't the weapon itself yet
The new plants are designed to combat wheat stem rust a fungus that used to take out a fifth of the U s.'wheat crop at once during epidemics through the 1950s.
the medical techniques described in their report Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam techniques which they recommend except in cases where the amputated penis had been eaten partially by a duck.
Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam by Kasian Bhanganada Tu Chayavatana Chumporn Pongnumkul Anunt Tonmukayakul Piyasakol Sakolsatayadorn Krit Komaratal and Henry Wilde
http://www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pubmed/11897278http://www. nvic. org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/April-2010/Vaccine-Contamination-Pig-Virus
and some form of contamination ofthe food supply may be preventing proper development from larvae to adult in bees leading to population loss. just a possibility worth going into.
if there was a real threat to drug company profits from lack of vaccination they will create their own epidemic
which obesity is considered an epidemic our country may go bankrupt because of all the old retired people on the government dole
and say it must be due to contamination b
#Make Your Own Small-Batch, Artisanal High Fructose Corn Syrupthink of corn on a hot summer's day.
There is a lot more behind the obesity epidemic than fast food. I'm sure most readers have seen Supersize Mehere is an'actual'documentary in response to it.
and a good bit of insight to some of the problems driving the obesity epidemic copy the link
and diabetes epidemic and admit they are stupid idiots. Did you really just write those salads aren't actually healthful at all?
in order to remove all contaminants from the water you really need to remove EVERYTHING from the water.
and cost prohibitive to selective filter individual contaminants. Using the TDS meter (Total Dissolved Solids on a part per million scale)
and Fukushima are the whole of world nuclear contamination. Whether it's the weapons and the nuke plants that create those isotopes
Where is Scythelord's proof that their is no radioactive contamination in groundwater near where they live?
Of course being a shill for the New world Order could have advantages like living in places where there is no contamination.
TYPE II DIABETES is related a lifestyle disease that has reached epidemic proportions having increased 10-fold in a few decades
Many of the contaminants lurking on leafy greens are noroviruses--the bugs that cause what most of us call the stomach flu--deposited by food handlers according to a story in the New york times
along with being the staple (raw spinach leaves cabbage etc) in many vegan diets it would seem that statistical probability alone dictate that they cause the most illness due to contamination by outside factors.
#Unleashing An Epidemic To Kill The Tumbleweedsdana Berner wants to start an epidemic among tumbleweeds.
The contamination was so widespread that experts have estimated between 4000 and 93000 extra cancer deaths have occurred
And since wild boar dig through soil for food they are affected particularly by this contamination. They also eat underground mushrooms and deer truffles
That's not exactly the kind of scene you imagine for the beginning of a sci-fi movie about the next big pandemic.
The H1n1 flu that reached pandemic proportions in 2009 first spent some time circulating among pigs in Asia Europe and North america.
and epidemic when new material was available. Malaria was ever present consuming the life blood
and fumigation resorted to when necessary in handling contagious diseases. Rotting vegetable and animal matter offal
I don t think it s a nationwide epidemic but as the Lone Star tick geographical distribution increases
I think it s going to be a regional epidemic in many areas. Meanwhile many of the meat allergy sufferers have had to adjust to a new normal.
The upshot is that shipments of recyclables into the country must truly be recyclables not contaminants or waste.
They also check the modules and the plants'leaves for contaminants which may come from the space station's environment.
The current mountain pine beetle epidemic has spread across 3. 4 million acres in Colorado since the outbreak was detected first in 1996.
Hybrid poplar trees which are grown usually in dense rows on flat land almost like a food crop are especially vulnerable to insect epidemics the researchers said.
Most of those illnesses were caused by contamination of the product with E coli or with species of Salmonella or Campylobacter.
or E coli and the contamination becomes a problem only when it contaminates other food or is consumed raw.
And a number of the recommendations about preventing severe epidemics of phoma stem canker have already been taken up.
and climate change has allowed the current epidemic to spread from lodgepole pine to jack pine a tree species that was thought to be unsuitable for beetle survival in Alberta.
and herbivores as well as why some species reach epidemic prevalence and abundance. Researchers also examined the difficulties of maintaining tree health
Whitefly experimentation to prevent contamination of agricultureon November 8th Jove the Journal of Visualized Experiments will introduce a new technique to aid in the development of defenses against diseases threatening food crops worldwide.
The whitefly method provides a means of interfering with the plant-contamination process as well as the cultivation of plants that are altogether resistant to infection.
while omitting the possibility of cross-contamination to other viruses--an easily encountered problem because of the sheer number of whiteflies used in testing.
Such contamination would jeopardize the results of an entire experiment. After exposing large numbers of a particular plant species to a specific whitefly-transmitted virus a researcher can then note which individual plants resisted infection and why.
In the food industry for example for coating foods to prevent microbial contamination and in the textile industry as a detergent for cleaning surfaces.
The BRS virus is equivalent to the human RS virus and causes most of the cases of serious pneumonia that lead to fatalities in calves and to epidemics
and Iowa to trace the likely origin of the emergent porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) to a strain from the Anhui province in China.
There is currently no vaccine against porcine epidemic diarrhea virus in the United states . Although some vaccines are in use in Asia we do not know
whether they would work against the U s. strains of the virus. The researchers determined not only that the three U s. strains of the porcine epidemic diarrhea virus are most closely related to the Chinese strains of the virus
and Genotyping of Emergent Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus Strains in the United states abstract in the Oct 15 issue of the American Academy of Microbiology's journal mbio.
and Chinese virus strains coincides with a porcine epidemic diarrhea virus outbreak in China back in December of 2010.
whether the U s. strains of the virus diverged in China or in the United states. The sudden emergence of porcine epidemic diarrhea virus
That means it could take longer than previously thought to reduce nitrate contamination in groundwater including in aquifers that supply drinking water in North america
In the 1980s surveys by the U s. Environmental protection agency and the U s. Geological Survey showed that nitrate contamination had impacted probably more public and domestic water supply wells in the U s. than any other contaminant.
Mayer is recognized an internationally expert in the use of stable isotopes to track contaminants in the environment.
Nitrate contamination of aquatic ecosystems can be reduced by farmers following the 4rs of nutrient stewardship:
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