Latest Avian influenza Stories

American Society for Microbiology publishes special commentaries In response to recent actions of the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), which recommended that two scientific journals withhold crucial details in upcoming reports about experiments with a novel strain of the bird flu virus, H5N1, the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) will publish a special series of commentaries by prominent scientists, including the acting chair of the NSABB, weighing in on...

Researchers at the University of Southampton, University of Oxford and Retroscreeen Virology Ltd have discovered a series of peptides, found on the internal structures of influenza viruses that could lead to the development of a universal vaccine for influenza, one that gives people immunity against all strains of the disease, including seasonal, avian, and swine flu. Influenza, an acute viral infection, affects hundreds of thousands of people a year and puts an enormous strain on...

A Georgetown University Medical Center professor says the voluntary action taken by two research teams to temporarily halt work involving the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 is “laudable.” In the researchers’ statement, published today by Science and Nature, the authors stated that they “recognize that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research and the measures taken to minimize its possible risks.” The...

The scientists behind a pair of controversial research projects designed to make a deadly strain of bird flu more contagious have agreed to halt their work for 60 days in order to allow experts to determine whether or not the research could lead to a global pandemic or a possible bioterrorism threat. A letter announcing the decision, authored by the three scientists behind the two studies -- Ron Fouchier, Adolfo García-Sastre, and Yoshihiro Kawaoka -- and three dozen other top influenza...

Worldwide pandemics of influenza caused widespread death and illness in 1918, 1957, 1968 and 2009. A new study examining weather patterns around the time of these pandemics finds that each of them was preceded by La Niña conditions in the equatorial Pacific. The study's authors--Jeffrey Shaman of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and Marc Lipsitch of the Harvard School of Public Health—note that the La Niña pattern is known to alter the migratory patterns of birds,...

Scientists are now saying that the U.S. government should not get to decide who controls the scientific information involving how to make the dangerous bird-flu virus. Ron Fouchier and Ab Osterhaus of Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam have accepted recommendations by the US government's National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity to keep details on how to construct the virus unpublished. "We do question whether it is appropriate to have one country dominate a discussion that has...

A Chinese man who died from bird flu over the weekend may have contracted the disease by running through a wetland park that had been filled with migratory birds, that nation's medical officials told reporters on Sunday. The victim, a 39-year-old bus driver identified only by his family name, Chen, died on Saturday -- one week after he was admitted to a hospital in the city of Shenzhen with pneumonia, Peter Simpson of the Telegraph reported on Sunday. The cause of death was listed as...

On Friday, the World Health Organization warned scientists who have been involved in engineering a highly pathogenic form of the deadly bird flu virus. The WHO said it was "deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences" of work by two leading flu research teams who said they found ways to make the H5N1 strain into an easily transmissible form. The work was stiffened by U.S. security advisers who wanted the details of how to make the deadly virus unpublished. The U.S....

Vaccine candidate shown to protect animals when administered under the tongue Scientists from the International Vaccine Institute (IVI) have discovered that an antigen common to most influenza viruses, and commonly referred to as matrix protein 2 (M2), when administered under the tongue could protect mice against experimental infection caused by various influenza viruses, including the highly pathogenic avian H5 virus and the pandemic H1 ("swine flu") virus. Importantly, this...

BLUE BELL, Pa., Nov. 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE AMEX: INO), which is advancing synthetic vaccines to fight cancers and infectious diseases, announced today that a single intradermal (ID) electroporation boost of its SynCon® avian influenza vaccine generated HAI titers against six different, unmatched strains of H5N1 - a distinct new clinical achievement on the global research community's path to develop universal influenza vaccines. This single synthetic...