Bird flu could hit Americas within a year

Los Alamos scientist tracking virus expects it within 2 years

By Sue Vorenberg
Tribune Columnist
March 8, 2006

Birds don't have to go through security checks when they cross borders.

They don't have to get tested for drugs or disease before visiting wintering grounds along the Rio Grande.

In the next two years, they could bring to New Mexico a deadly natural biological weapon - bird flu - says Jeanne Fair, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She has been studying how the disease will travel from Asia and Europe into the United States and New Mexico.

The strain that has infected millions of birds worldwide will almost certainly be here in the next two years, possibly by late 2007, Fair said.

Whether the H5N1 influenza virus that they carry has mutated into a strain that can create a pandemic outbreak in humans remains to be seen.

"I think it will probably be here sooner, but it's one of those guess points of people in ornithology," Fair said. "If you have the summer, you have breeding birds over in Europe. Then they'll probably go north, mix again (with birds in Alaska), and then next fall and next winter, we could start seeing it."

For the past year, Fair has been investigating where bird flu might show up in New Mexico along the Rio Grande corridor. She did the same thing for West Nile virus for the five years before that.

Los Alamos has about 40 people working on the problem and investigating ways to track bird flu, test for it and genetically isolate particular strains and where they came from, said Babs Marrone, a lab scientist working on the problem.

"You have a better chance of predicting (how the disease will spread) if you know what's in the environment naturally," she said.

The efforts fall under the lab's national security mission, Marrone said.

"I think one thing we can do about it is to continue our planning and getting counter-measures in place with the expectation that there will be a pandemic in the human population - whether it's this year or 20 years from now," Marrone said.

The disease, spread through bird feces, saliva and infected water, was first found in Hong Kong in 1997 and spread in birds through Asia.

In the past two years, it has migrated through the Middle East and into Europe and Africa but has not reached North America.

The flu has infected a small number of people, mostly poultry workers.

As of Monday, the World Health Organization listed 175 cases in Asia and the Middle East, with 95 deaths.

It's the high death rate associated with the disease in humans that worries health officials.

If the disease mutates so it can spread from human to human, rather than just from bird to human, a deadly pandemic could spread across the globe, killing millions, said C. Mack Sewell, the New Mexico state epidemiologist.

"If it stays in wildlife, at that point it's not a big issue for human health," Sewell said. "The problem is human-to-human transmission. Internationally, we're only seeing a very small amount of human transmission from birds or exposure to bird products."

But wild birds can infect domesticated birds in chicken farms, and those birds are more likely to spread the disease to humans because of increased contact, Fair said.

Tens of thousands of waterfowl such as ducks, geese and cranes spend winters in New Mexico along the Rio Grande corridor every year. When they bring bird flu into the state, they could infect other birds and the water that the birds and other creatures live in, Fair said.

"You have to test the birds and test the water," Fair said. "If you find it in a lake, influenzas can hang around for a month. Some studies have shown it staying over 200 days."

The longer the disease remains in the water, the more likely it is to find other host species, Fair said.

In Germany and Thailand, it has jumped to cats, which shows the virus is finding new ways to mutate, Fair said.

"We know it infects cats - that's unheard of," Fair said. "Cats do not get influenza."

Cats can transmit the disease to other cats, too, which is another warning sign, she said.

"Minks are susceptible, and of course, pigs will be important, as well," Fair said. "They're sort of a mixing vessel. They have receptors that are similar to birds but also to humans."

When the first infected birds are found in New Mexico, the state would try to isolate the areas they are found in and quarantine domestic birds there, Sewell said.

The state will test more regularly across the state after the disease first appears in the United States, Sewell said.

Internationally, animal vaccines have been developed for bird flu, but a human vaccine can't be developed until a strain is isolated in humans, Sewell said.

Developing a batch of vaccines can also take from six to eight months, which is "long enough for a pandemic strain to produce a first wave worldwide," Sewell said.

Still, groups are investigating some sort of primer vaccine that might reduce the death rate while a more reliable vaccine is developed, Sewell said.

Interesting article   , as being a long time NM resident,  Los Alamos  has always been  mainly associated with atomic physics, space,laser,partical acelarater and computer programing  . DOE ,  DOD  and National Security  research . This is one of the main labs that helped bring about the  A- bomb.  Always concidered as haveing the  top notch scientists working on cutting edge research.