Bird Flu Monitor > Serial passage of H5N1 can create an airborne virus | Monotreme's ...

[Monotreme's Blog] Although the scientists doing this work were interested in modeling natural evolution, it should be noted that they likely created a very dangerous virus in the laboratory. We don’t know how lethal a virus adapted to ferrets would be to humans, but given that we are both mammals and that ferrets accurately model many aspects of human influenza infection, there is a good chance that the virus created is quite dangerous to humans.

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[Medical Wiki - Medical Jobs, Careers And Information] Viral Attack: Influenza A Symptoms, Transmission, and Prevention ...: However, influenza is identified by a sudden onset of high grade fever accompanied by fatigue, which the common cold does not have. Furthermore, the symptoms above are also common in other forms of influenza, although Conjunctivitis (the redness of the eyes, also called “pink eye”) is more commonly present in Influenza A than in the other types.

[Science Media Centre] Science Media Centre » Blog Archive » Experts Respond: Potential ...: Of the eight human infections in Cambodia this year, all patients died. These H5N1 viruses are extremely virulent in mammals, including lab mice, ferrets, and naturally infected cats and leopards.

[ViroBlogy] HIV Vaccines From Bangkok – 4, and final…. « ViroBlogy: Jeffrey Boyington (Vaccine Res Ctr) described some very impressive work on using structure of Env for rational immunogen design, specifically to target the CD4 binding site as a good target for broadly neutralising Ab.  They used crytallographic data to make proteins best mimicking the struc and then used them as immunogens.  They had used stabilised resurfaced gp120 with mutations around the binding site and isolated dozens of Abs with them from several infected subjects.  Part of the process involved stabilising flexible regions by bolstering cysteine content, removing glycans from the site of interest and adding them to immunodominant sites, and using Chikungunya virus VLPs to multimerise spike proteins for maximal immunogenicity.  Boyington noted that there were 80 native trimers on the surface of the VLPs, and that one can put the Outer Domain of gp120 on the tip of each monomer.  They get good Ab back for gp120 and get CD4 binding site Ab in rabbits.  In rhesus monkeys primed with gp140 trimers they got good boosting and better Abs to the CD4 BS.

[Bird Flu Monitor] Bird Flu Monitor: An H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza virus ...: To challenge the epizootic of avian influenza A (H5N1) viruses among birds continues to cause human disease with high mortality and threat of a pandemic, an updates 2005 report was reviewed recently by World Health Organization (WHO) including Highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) .

[newsphiles» :: Newsphiles.org ::] Newsphiles.org | Newsphiles.org: Security experts expressed alarm that something this serious could happen, calling the co-mingling (or reassortment) of human H3N2 with H5N1 avian viruses a dangerous practice that should never occur because of the potentially devastating effects to human health. “If someone exposed to a mixture of the two had been simultaneously infected with both strains, he or she could have served as an incubator for a hybrid virus able to transmit easily to and among people,”

[Dinocrat] Dinocrat » Blog Archive » Of ferrets, handkerchiefs, and bird flu: The ferrets were infected with several H5N1 strains in addition to a common human influenza virus (H3N2) that circulates almost every year. The infected animals were then either placed in the same cage with uninfected ferrets to test transmissibility by close contact or in adjacent cages with perforated walls to test spread of the virus from respiratory droplets.

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