IMMEDIATE action is needed to prevent bird flu spreading from ducks to mammals, warn researchers at the Veterinary Research Institute in Harbin, China. They have shown that a strain of avian flu circulating among ducks in the country is becoming increasingly dangerous to mammals.
The team tested 21 samples of the H5N1 strain taken from healthy ducks in southern China between 1999 and 2002. While the 1999 samples had little effect on mice, later samples made mice increasingly ill, and some of the 2002 viruses killed them (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0403212101).
The researchers suggest…
