The bird flu virus discovered by researchers in a seriously ill patient hospitalized in the United States has mutated and adapted better to the human respiratory tract. According to the American authorities, the mutation raises concerns, but there is currently no evidence that it would he also transferred the virus in this form to someone else. TASR informs about it according to the AFP report.
A patient over the age of 65 was hospitalized in the state of Louisiana more than a week ago in in critical condition with severe respiratory symptoms of H5N1 bird flu Contact us sick and dead poultry.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) after conducting an analysis found that a certain percentage of the virus discovered in the patient’s throat had genetic changes. According to him, these can lead to an increased ability of the virus to bind to certain cell receptors in the human upper respiratory tract. These genetic changes, however they did not find in the poultry that the man keeps. The CDC says the mutations likely arose multiplication of this virus in a patient with an advanced disease.
Experts contacted by AFP say it is too early to say whether the virus will be able to adapt to these genetic changes spread more easily or cause more serious diseases in humans. This particular mutation “is one of the steps to increase the contagiousness of the virus”, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the Canadian University of Saskatchewan. At the same time, however, she emphasized that is not a single step.
Researcher Thijs Kuiken from Erasmus MC University Hospital in the Netherlands shares her opinion. According to him, the effective attachment of the virus to the cells of the human upper respiratory tract is “necessary, but not sufficient for more effective transmission between people, because the process of attachment is only one of several steps in the cycle of virus multiplication in a human cell”.
However, Rasmussen expressed more concern about the general spread of avian flu than about the specific case of the patient in Louisiana. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in 2024 65 confirmed cases of bird flu in humans in the US. Others, according to AFP, probably remained undetected among employees of dairies and poultry farms.
