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03/24/2006
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Mar. 24, 2006
Why Is Avian Flu So Hard To Catch?
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| New research looks at the behavior of the avian influenza virus in lungs and how that behavior might translate into the spread of the disease from one organism to another. Although over a hundred people have been infected with the H5N1 virus commonly known as bird flu, all those cases seem to have been ones in which a human contracted the disease from an infected animal rather than from another person. The new research says that the virus does not appear to multiply well in the upper respiratory tract of humans, and is mostly found deep in the lungs. A change to the virus that allows it to live higher in the lungs could make it much more of a public health threat, researchers believe. We'll talk about the work, and efforts to control the spread of bird flu. |
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