and from Shanghai, contracted the H7n9 virus in February and died within 8 Â days.
A 35-year-old woman from Anhui province, who contracted the virus in March, was in a critical condition as Nature went to press.
and a third was seriously ill from being infected with a new avian influenza virus, H7n9, that has never been seen before in humans.
Emerging preliminary analyses of the genome of the virus point to the possible spectre of a pathogen that might spread silently in poultry without causing serious disease.
That would make the virus difficult to monitor, with animal reservoirs of the virus likely going undetected.
Should the virus become established in birds or other animals regular human infections might then occur providing opportunities for the virus to adapt better to humans,
and ultimately to spread between them, 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,
says Masato Tashiro, a virologist at the Influenza Virus Research center in Tokyo, the World health organization (WHO) influenza reference
says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist at the University of Hong kong. Any time an animal influenza virus crosses to humans it is a cause for concern,
and with three severe cases of disease over a short period of time, we certainly have to take it seriously,
The first case infected by the novel H7n9 virus was an 87-year-old man in Shanghai who became ill on 19 february
So far, there seems to be sustained no spread of the virus between people. Chinese authorities tracked dozens of contacts of the three cases and reported that none showed relevant symptoms
or tested positive for the virus. Some uncertainty hangs over whether family members related to the first patient who were hospitalized with severe pneumonia just before their elderly father might have passed on the virus to the housebound man
Although the family members reportedly tested negative for the virus, the results might have been false negatives.
Chinese researchers have moved swiftly to decipher the new virus. THE WHO Chinese National Influenza Center in Beijing has sequenced isolates from each of the three cases,
since been racing to discover what clues the genome might hold  including the source of the virus,
Analyses suggest that the virus is a novel virus that has been generated by reassortment which occurs when different virus strains infect a host at the same time
and swap genes with each other. Flu viruses have eight genes: two that encode the haemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N) proteins that stud the surface of the virus,
and six that code for internal proteins. In the three human cases, the genes coding for the internal proteins seem to come from H9n2 viruses a class that is endemic in birds,
including poultry, in Asia and elsewhere. More specifically, the sequences appear similar to recent H9n2 viruses found in China and South korea.
The gene for the N protein, says Tashiro, seems to be similar to avian H11n9 viruses that were found in South korea in 2011;
in Hongze, Jiangsu, in 2010; and in the Czech republic in 2005. The gene for the H protein especially critical,
because this protein allows the virus to bind to host cells seems to belong to a Eurasian group of H7 avian flu viruses.
In other words, the new virus seems to stem from a reassortment of three virus strains that infect only birds.
This is in contrast to the 2009 H1n1 pandemic virus, which was a mix of viruses that infect birds, pigs and humans.
Most of the genetic analyses are still being carried out confidentially within THE WHO's global flu-research networks.
But some researchers such as a team at the University of Edinburgh, UK, have started also posting their preliminary analyses online.
A striking feature of the novel virus is that its H protein is structurally similar to that of viruses that don t cause severe sickness in birds,
such as the H5n1 virus that has been ravaging poultry flocks in Asia since late 2002. Flu viruses that don t sicken birds can,
however, cause severe disease in humans simply because we lack any immunity to them. They also may be more lethal in people depending on how the viruses bind to receptors in the human airway.
Although it is early days scientists say that it seems clear from the sequence that the novel virus has acquired key mutations that permit the H protein to latch onto receptors on mammalian cells in the airways instead of onto avian receptors.
The virus also contains several other genetic variations that are known from past studies in mice and other animals to cause severe disease.
Initial data also suggest that the virus is affecting cells deep in the lung, which would fit with a picture of a virus much like that of the novel coronavirus that emerged in the middle East last year  that can cause severe disease.
But it could also indicate that the virus doesn t spread as easily as one that affects the nose and throat
which can be coughed and sneezed out more readily. The full pattern of receptor binding has yet to be worked out, cautions Peiris.
The fact that the virus does not seem to cause serious disease in birds has potential epidemiological and public-health implications,
Peiris adds. It could be spreading in poultry undetected and thus could create a reservoir of infection that would lead to frequent sporadic human infections that crop up without warning.
A highly pathogenic virus such as H5n1 is easy to spot because it wipes out flocks,
But it might be almost impossible to control a virus in birds that generates few visible symptoms
or animals the affected humans caught the virus from. H7 viruses are common in wild birds but much less so in poultry.
It therefore seems unlikely that three human cases in such a short space of time could result from contact with wild birds
Domestic fowl are the most likely alternative source of the virus . But given that H7n9 has mutations that enable it to infect mammals,
Flu experts say that other urgent requirements include testing any human cases of serious pneumonia for traces of the virus
A 32-month-old girl living near Mogadishu has been paralysed by the virus. There have been no polio immunizations in some parts of the country since 2009.
genetic testing was under way to determine the virus s origin. The only other countries that have recorded wild poliovirus cases in 2013 are Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria,
with scientific discussions including threats from the avian influenza viruses H7n9 and H5n1. gm. asm. org21-23 may The Pasteur institute in Paris hosts an international symposium on HIV research,
Hepatitis drug A new hepatitis-C drug sofosbuvir, has been found to be highly effective in clinical trials.
the drug is one of several in development that could replace existing hepatitis-C treatments,
Deadly pig virus slips through US bordersthe pathogen, a type of coronavirus called porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV),
As pigs there developed immunity, the virus petered out and now causes only occasional, isolated outbreaks.
The virus can spread quickly by a faecal-oral route and infect entire herds. And although adult pigs typically recover
The virus poses no health threat to humans. The US Department of agriculture (USDA) had tried to keep PEDV and other diseases out of the country by restricting imports of pigs and pork products from certain nations, such as China.
The fact that the virus has now spread to 14 states in total is a sign that the outbreak is still flaring
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
To understand the virus s enigmatic US entry, scientists are sequencing VIRAL DNA isolated from pigs and comparing it with PEDV variants from elsewhere in the world.
and vaccines to prevent the virus from spreading. The National Pork Board has approved $800, 000 to fund research and education.
but only after years of working with the virus. In the United states, the same import restrictions that were set up to help to prevent PEDV from entering the country have made it difficult to import the necessary lab materials for working with the virus, such as vaccines, infected cells
says Linda  Saif, a virologist at Ohio State university in Wooster. Access to the virus
and good tests in hand"would have helped us identify which herds have been exposed, and one could have imposed more stringent control measures,
The USDA s National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames is one of just a few US facilities to have grown the virus successfully.
the lab imported the virus around 15 Â years ago from Asia, after a lengthy security-clearance process, in preparation for just such an outbreak.
and plan to distribute the virus to researchers on request in the coming weeks. In the meantime, other research groups have focused on detecting VIRAL DNA in sick pigs
a scientist at the University of Minnesota s Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, will publish the sequence of a virus genome taken from a Colorado farm.
many researchers suspect that the virus originated in China, but Marthaler says that he is surprised by the level of similarity,
because he would have expected the US virus to have evolved more in the time since it arrived.
the potential origin of the virus does not say anything about the route that it took to reach the United states. Canada,
And although researchers know that the virus can be transported in faeces, they do not know how long it can survive outside pigs intestines,
And researchers still hope that they can elucidate the virus s international and domestic path by looking for subtle evolutionary changes in viral genome sequences of samples from Asia and different US states.
wonders what the virus will do next. Agriculture experts speculate that it may be more stable in cooler temperatures
Research restart Research on the rinderpest virus is set to resume after being off limits since 2011,
or intentional release of the virus. The moratorium was lifted on 10 july and replaced by an international oversight system.
Rinderpest research restartsresearch is set to resume on the rinderpest virus, the cause of a deadly cattle disease that was declared eradicated in 2011
The moratorium part of efforts to guard against accidental or intentional release of virus that could reintroduce the disease was lifted on 10 july
whether vaccines developed against a closely related virus peste des petits ruminants (PPR), which causes disease in sheep
Some 55 labs in 35 countries still hold some kind of rinderpest virus, according to a 2011 survey published in January 2013 in the journal Emerging Infectious diseases:
The most dangerous stocks are of live field strains of virus, estimated to be kept in at least 16 labs in 14 countries,
The FAO and the OIE hope to eventually reduce the number of sites holding live wild viruses to a handful of officially designated labs
says David Ulaeto, a virologist and member of the joint advisory committee. Conversely, the agencies plan to centralize stocks of vaccines in a few high-containment repositories in regions at highest risk of disease,
The process of destroying virus or shipping it to centres with high biosafety levels must be done in a way that does not risk its release,
The FAO and the OIE are working on high-security protocols for shipping the virus and ways to ensure that autoclaves in labs holding it are certified to function at levels guaranteed to provide a 100%kill.
A vaccine that protects piglets from one common influenza virus also makes them more vulnerable to a rarer flu strain,
The animals responded by making antibodies that blocked that virus but aided infection with the swine flu H1n1,
The root of the different immune responses lies with the mushroom-shaped haemagglutinin protein found on the outside of influenza-virus particles
In the study, a vaccine for H1n2 spurred pigs to produce antibodies that bound the cap and the stem of that virus s haemagglutinin.
helping that virus fuse to cell membranes. That made H1n1 more efficient at infecting pigs and causing disease.
because they are relatively consistent across many types of influenza viruses. The new study suggests that such vaccines could also produce antibodies that enhance the ability of some viruses to infect new hosts,
says James Crowe, an immunologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. But that does not mean that researchers should stop developing novel flu vaccines,
Emergence of H7n9 avian flu hints at broader threatthe H7n9 influenza virus did not emerge alone.
the authors of a study published today in Nature1 say that their finding reinforces the idea that H7 avian viruses are constantly mixing
Ducks, in particular, act as living mixing bowls for avian viruses. Domestic species encounter a large catalogue of wild-bird viruses,
which swap genes to form versions that can spread to chickens and to humans. Better surveillance of Chinese bird populations is needed to monitor the emergence of dangerous viruses such as H7n9,
says lead author Yi Guan, an influenza specialist at the University of Hong kong. In China, the virus has infected 135 people
and resulted in 44 deaths since February. This is a very different influenza ecosystem from other countries
About 10%of samples tested positive for an influenza virus; of those, 15%were an H7 virus
. When the team sequenced the two viruses genomes and compared them to other bird-flu strains,
they found H7n9 and H7n7 to be hybrids of wild Eurasian waterfowl strains, such as H7n3 and H11n9.
The scientists think that those viruses swapped genes in domestic ducks before spreading to chickens, where they traded genes with a common chicken virus, H9n2.
That improved the viruses'ability to spread in chickens, which live in close contact with humans.
But Guan and his team found that ferrets could become infected with the virus suggesting that a spread to humans is possible.
It really shows that the emergence of these types of viruses can happen at any time,
David Morens, an influenza researcher and senior adviser at the US National institutes of health in Bethesda, Maryland, says that the evolutionary pathway that the viruses followed suggests that more surveillance
The virus is thought to have originated in bats, but could have spread to humans through one or more intermediate hosts.
all showed evidence of previous infection with MERS-Cov or a closely related virus (C.  B.  E.  M.  Reusken et  al.
H7n9 virus persists China reported on 11 august its first new case of the H7n9 avian influenza virus in three weeks:
and found these mice had significantly less virus than mice fed normal rice. The rice could be used to complement vaccinations to protect children
but weakened immune systems are a likely factor says Miren Iturriza-Gomara, a virologist at the UK-based University of Liverpool and one of the study's authors.
whereas viruses and nematode worms shifted to lower latitudes. Other groups showed no detectable change."
that those pest groups seen moving towards the equator largely nematode worms and viruses are the most poorly understood,
from viruses to fish and mammals, have become invasive in the country (see Space invaders).
Pig virus spreads Canada confirmed its first case of porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus on 23 Â January.
The virus, which causes diarrhoea and vomiting in pigs, was detected on a farm in Middlesex County, Ontario.
First identified in the United kingdom in 1971, the virus can kill 80-100%of infected piglets.
2013), and the virus has since spread to 23 states. Fraudster punished Biotech investor David Blech is heading for prison after unsuccessfully appealing against a four-year sentence for fraud.
where high population density and poor sanitation had enabled the poliomyelitis virus to spread. Pakistan Afghanistan and Nigeria remain the only countries never to interrupt transmission of polio,
and the virus reemerged last year in war-torn Syria and the Horn of Africa. Pesticide risks On 8 Â January, the US Environmental protection agency announced the award of nearly US$500,
Maryland, had published falsified data on the immune responses of patients with hepatitis to a newly discovered virus. A week earlier, Dong-Pyou Han,
Vietnam on high alert over flu riskthe H7n9 avian-influenza virus that has killed more than 100 people in China in the past year has for the first time been detected in a province bordering Vietnam,
The country was hit hard by another avian-flu virus, H5n1, a decade ago, and suffered enormous economic losses and more than 60 Â human deaths.
The virus s epidemiology remains largely unchanged from last year: it is still, essentially, an avian virus that is sporadically infecting humans from a reservoir in poultry,
and there is no evidence of any continued human-to-human spread. But the virus is being sustained in unknown reservoirs in the poultry supply chain, making future outbreaks likely,
and its geographical expansion is a reminder of the threat beyond China. Furthermore, although case numbers have shown signs of dropping in the past two weeks,
One year on from the first outbreak, researchers are still struggling to understand the origins and dynamics of the virus s reservoirs and spread.
in part because the virus causes only mild disease in poultry and thus spreads silently, with human cases typically the first warning of a poultry outbreak.
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.
Worobey and his colleagues analysed more than 80,000 gene sequences from flu viruses isolated from humans, birds, horses,
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,
notes that it identified an avian relationship for two genes in the 1918 virus, but not for six genes,
but there is evidence that the influenza virus evolves at different rates in different hosts faster in birds than in horses, for example.
The analysis also reveals a shared ancestor for almost all avian flu strains and an H7n7 virus that struck down horses and mules throughout North america in 1872.
"We now have this idea that the source for a lot of influenza virus we see now worldwide is potentially equine,
Now some bacteria or virus that infect humans on earth take a long time to actually show up
or virus the strong ability to spread across humanity. Well now you can imagine where this gone.
Turns out that these chickens have a high incidence of a particular retrovirus called EAV-HP. Retroviruses are a type of virus that integrates its own genetic data into the host in an unusual order.
via Virology Blog I'm not sure I go for this. There are many araucanas or more properly americanas in backyard flocks.
If this is a virus acquired trait why hasn't it been passed to other chicken breeds?
The virus itself may not be there anymore -but the changed genes simply have been passed down from bird to bird-essentially creating a new breed.
comes from a virus and not from our ancestors according to researchers in Japan and the U s. Wilkev Fenton Blues were developed from Legbars
or virus that will then be delivered in small amounts to the plants they already pollinate.
The Eagle Mountain International Church in Newark Texas released a statement for its members on August 15 the day after the Tarrant County Public health Department informed the church that one of its missionaries who traveled to a country where measles is had still endemic brought the virus
To âÂ#Âoeeradicateã¢Â# a disease means to eliminate it entirely even to the point of the virus itself.
But there is no evidence the virus has been destroyed in the West. It is unclear exactly what evidence the Tarrant County Health Department has that the missionary brought the measles that supposedly infected the congregation.
-when-it-was contaminated-with-cancer-virus. htmlknowing now what we know about vaccines and medicine you think our previous attempts at vaccines are full proof?
http://www. ncbi. nlm. nih. gov/pubmed/11897278http://www. nvic. org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/April-2010/Vaccine-Contamination-Pig-Virus
Antibiotics also came into play in the 1940's but that only treats bacterial critters and not viruses.
when thy tyrant overlords want to burn books they will just release a secret virus to delete
My question to you is do you have antibiotics that kill resistant bacteria's and viruses?
a virus that attacks the female reproductive system. It shuts it down. Why female? Because the female could artificially inseminate
The most contagious virus ever. Now of course we will have a cure. A complex TEMPORARY and expensive cure.
For example fish genes have been placed in tomatoes human genes in tobacco bacteria in corn and viruses in squash and fruit.
A study published in October showed the mice predicted how well a drug for treating hepatitis C would be metabolized by humans.
Before 2000 pediatricians in the U s. routinely gave kids a polio vaccine that contained live attenuated polio virus. Now American kids get a vaccine with an inactivated
or killed virus. Very rarely the live virus in the older vaccine could actually revert to its natural state and cause paralysis a tragic consequence.
They already handle numerous viruses and bacteria all around them in everyday life. The U s. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend vaccines at very young ages
And consider how many even know about polio vaccine containing the aã¢Â# attenuatedã¢Â# virus up until 2000
I don't believe there is such a thing as a live virus. They do not have any of the attributes of living things.
Monkeys contain simian viruses. 11 When the poliovirus was passaged through the monkeys or grown on the monkey kidney cells for production extrane g
ALL OF the mobile viruses are on Android and more every day. Combined with vendors being reluctant to update the system this makes using Android dangerous for nontechnical people
-and the more well off you are the more you have to lose in terms of a virus getting into a bank account or something else.
kgelner-name anyone you know have heard of anywhere at anytime in the US who has ever ever got a virus on Android.
Stats from virus scanner software doesn't count people who pirate apps don't count people in Russia an China don't count.
and viruses that honeybees do and they don't have the same social order Droege says.
The semen is screened for viruses before it comes into the U s. That means of course that the task of collecting bee semen falls upon the U s. team's colleagues overseas.
. I know it sounds like the beginning of a low-budget killer-virus movie but it's real.
They actually do carry a virus that's harmless to monkeys but 80%fatal to humans!
while infected with the herpes B virus . Although the herpes B virus is not harmful to the monkeys once transmitted to a human the virus infection has an almost 80%fatality rate (Shemcreeks).
The CDC report stated that there were outbreaks among locals when the monkeys became overpopulated. Puerto rico was alarmed by this
#Scientists Build Hollow Virus For Cheaper Vaccinescall it hollow-hearted. Researchers have built a mimic of the outer capsule of the foot-and-mouth disease virus. Inside where the virus'genetic material normally lives is empty.
Such synthetic virus-like particles could go into a foot -and-mouth vaccine that's cheaper to make
because it doesn't require the tight biosecurity that a factory that makes vaccines from live viruses needs its creators say.
The researchers have built also the virus mimic in such a way that it can stay out of a refrigerator for longer than current foot
-and-mouth vaccines so it could ship more easily around the world. In the future the same techniques could apply to vaccines to the polio virus which belongs to a large group of viruses related to hoof
-and-mouth Andrew Macadam a polio researcher at the U k. National Institute for Biological Standards and Control told the BBC.
or killed polio viruses. The weakened type still carries a small risk of reverting to its original form
The hollow virus works because its outside stimulates the immune system to create antibodies against it.
The instructions for the virus'spread never exist not even in the factory. There's still plenty of testing to do before the newly created virus shell can be used as a vaccine however.
The empty virus'creators a team of researchers from the U k. have tested the synthetic virus in just eight cattle.
Five of the cattle showed resistance to foot -and-mouth infection after getting immunized. The U k. might have particular interest in driving this research forward.
@ssiletti--Its probably the result of some sort of failed weapons test to disguise a virus that has a high mortality rate with one the body may not react as violently to n
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