A long-anticipated paper detailing the creation of an artificial strain of H5N1 bird flu virus that, while less lethal, is capable of transmission in mammals has been published today (May 2) in Nature. The report reveals that a real-world conversion of H5N1 to a form that could cause a pandemic in humans is potentially only a few mutations away.
“[The study] has disproven the tenet held by some influenza virologists that this particular high-pathology avian flu could not adapt to transmission in mammals,” said Stan Lemon of the University of North Carolina, who was not involved in the research. “Now we know that that can happen it is a bit of a wake-up call.”
Some scientists had doubted the possibility that H5N1 bird flu could ...
