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Concern
after bird flu 'passes from father to daughter'
Researchers
have reported the first case of human-to-human transmission of the
new bird flu that has emerged in China.
BBC,
6
August, 2013
The
British Medical Journal said a 32-year-old woman was infected after
caring for her father.
Until
now there had been no evidence of anyone catching the H7N9 virus
other than after direct contact with birds.
But
experts stressed it does not mean the virus has developed the ability
to spread easily between humans.
By
30 June there had been 133 cases of H7N9 bird flu reported in eastern
China and 43 deaths.
Most
people had visited live poultry markets or had close contact with
live poultry in the week or two before they became ill.
Intensive
care
Yet
researchers found that the 32-year-old woman had become infected in
March after caring for her 60-year-old father in hospital.
Unlike
her father - who had visited a poultry market in the week before
falling ill - she had no known exposure to live poultry but fell ill
six days after her last contact with him.
Both
died in intensive care of multiple organ failure.
Tests
on the virus taken from both patients showed the strains were almost
genetically identical, which supports the theory that the daughter
was infected directly from her father rather than another source.
Public
health officials tested 43 close contacts of the patients but all
tested negative for H7N9, suggesting the ability of the virus to
spread was limited.
The
researchers said that while there was no evidence to suggest the
virus had gained the ability to spread from person to person
efficiently, this was the first case of a "probable
transmission" from human to human.
'Strong
warning sign'
"Our
findings reinforce that the novel virus possesses the potential for
pandemic spread," they concluded.
Dr
James Rudge, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine,
said that limited transmission between humans is not surprising and
has been seen before in other bird flu viruses, such as H5N1.
He
added: "It would be a worry if we start to see longer chains of
transmission between people, when one person infects someone else,
who in turn infects more people, and so on.
"And
particularly if each infected case goes on to infect, on average,
more than one other person, this would be a strong warning sign that
we might be in the early stages of an epidemic."
An
accompanying editorial in the BMJ, co-authored by Dr Rudge, concluded
that while this study might not suggest that H7N9 is any closer to
delivering the next pandemic, "it does provide a timely reminder
of the need to remain extremely vigilant
