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Bird Flu Viruses Breed in Human Lungs - Japanese Research

Posted on: Wednesday, 22 March 2006, 21:00 CST

Text of report in English by Japanese news agency Kyodo

Tokyo, 23 March: [datelined as received] The fact that avian influenza viruses replicate efficiently only in the lower region of the human respiratory tract instead of the upper region as in human flu may be the reason why human-to-human transmission of bird flu remains rare, a group of Japanese researchers said in findings published in a British journal dated Thursday [23 March].

While human influenza viruses infect cells lining the nose and throat and are easily spread by sneezing and coughing, avian viruses were not prevalent in such mucus, according to the article in Nature submitted by Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science, and his team.

"Further genetic mutations will be needed for the (avian) viruses to confer a pandemic among human beings," Kawaoka said.

The highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of bird flu has spread from Asia to the Middle East, Europe, Africa and other parts of the world. More than 100 people have been killed by the virus but human- to-human transmissions remains rare.

Kawaoka and his team researched the different binding molecules preferred by the avian and human influenza viruses and found that while the human viruses bound extensively to cells in the nose and throat, the avian virus receptor was more dominant in the lung and bronchi.

Source: BBC Monitoring Newsfile

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