Bird Flu Center

A Vietnamese research team has studied 18 bird flu victims and compared them with 8 people infected with a strain of human flu virus. The team, working at the Hospital for Tropical Disease, in Ho Chi Minh City, have discovered interesting details about the way avian influenza is manifested and the way it attacks the human body. The H5N1 virus used a high virus load to cause a massive inflammatory response which eventually kills the victim. Also, tests revealed that the highly pathogenic virus puts higher loads of the virus into the victims’ throats, rather than their nose, which commonly happens in regular human flu victims. The virus’ ability to replicate is also much higher that the one of a common flu. The human body’s response to the virus, an intense inflammatory effect, combined with other effects of the virus, is what eventually causes the patient to die. Roughly 240 people have been infected with bird flu since the first outbreaks were reported in 2003 and about half of them have succumbed to the disease. Another finding of the study was that antiviral drug are to some degree in fighting the bird flu virus, with drugs such as Tamiflu reducing the virus load and preventing a harmful response by the human immune system.