The world's first human case of the Bird Flu has been reported.
A woman from central Taiwan who entered a hospital complaining of flu-like symptoms including shortness of breath in May and was confirmed to be infected with the wild avian influenza H6N1 virus, an Exchange Magazine news release reported.
"A genetic analysis of the H6N1 virus identified in a 20-year-old woman shows a virus that has evolved the ability to target a receptor called SAα-2,6 found in the human upper respiratory tract, potentially enabling adaptation of the virus to human cells," lead author Doctor Ho-Sheng Wu from the Centres for Disease Control in Taiwan, said.
The woman was treated with oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and has made a full recovery.
Throat-swab samples revealed the virus was a subtype of influenza A that had not been classified. The researchers performed genome sequencing and found it was an avian-origin H6N1, which has been seen in Taiwan since the early 1970s.
Further investigation showed the virus had mutation in its haemagglutinin ("a binding protein on the surface of the virus that enables it to get into human cells and cause infection") that could make it more likely to infect humans.
"H6N1 is a low pathogenic virus commonly found in wild and domestic birds across many continents. Our findings suggest that a unique group of H6N1 viruses with the human adaption marker G228S have become endemic and predominant in poultry in Taiwan. As these viruses continue to evolve and accumulate changes, they increase the potential risk of human infection. Further investigations are needed to clarify the potential threat posed by this emerging virus," Dr. Wu said.
The infected woman had not been around wild birds or traveled for at least three months, so the source of her infection is yet to be determined.
Thirty-six of the woman's close contacts developed respiratory-tract infections, but were ruled out as H6N1 even though no genome sequencing was performed.
"With the detection of a virus of subtype H6N1, the list of questions to address is a familiar one. Viruses with H6 subtype haemagglutinins are quite prevalent in wild birds and have often been identified in poultry, along with other influenza viruses, resulting in generation of an ever expanding diverse set of influenza viruses through genetic reassortment... what would it take for these viruses to evolve into a pandemic strain? And an overriding question is if it is time to review our approaches to influenza surveillance at the human-animal interface? We surely can do better than to have human beings as sentinels," Marion Koopmans of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands wrote in a comment on the report.
