(Press-News.org) WHAT:
The emergence of a novel H7N9 avian influenza virus in humans in China has raised questions about its pandemic potential as well as that of related influenza viruses. In a commentary published online today, scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, address these questions by evaluating past outbreaks of H7 subtype influenza viruses among mammals and birds and comparing H7 viruses with other avian influenza viruses and strains.
In recent decades, the scientists write, avian H7 viruses have caused numerous influenza outbreaks among poultry in Europe and North America. Since at least 1918, none of these poultry-adapted viruses has evolved to widely infect humans or cause a pandemic. However, some of them have stably adapted to infect mammals such as horses, suggesting that these viruses might become adapted to and transmissible among other mammals, including humans. In particular, the novel H7N9 virus shares some genes with the H9N2 influenza virus subtype, which has also infected humans. This genetic relatedness may predispose it to more easily adapt to humans than other H7 viruses.
The possibility that H7N9 or another H7 virus may adapt to easily infect humans highlights a need for more research on how avian influenza strains adapt to mammals, especially humans, and better integration of influenza research between human and veterinary public health specialists, the study authors conclude.
###
ARTICLE:
Morens DM et al. H7N9 avian influenza and the perpetual challenge of potential human pandemicity. mBio DOI: 10.1128/mBio.00445-13 (2013).
WHO:
Study authors Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID director; David M. Morens, M.D., senior advisor to the NIAID director; and Jeffery K. Taubenberger, M.D., Ph.D., section chief in NIAID's Laboratory of Infectious Diseases are available to discuss the article.
CONTACT:
To schedule interviews, please contact Nalini Padmanabhan, (301) 402-1663, niaidnews@niaid.nih.gov.
NIAID conducts and supports research—at NIH, throughout the United States, and worldwide—to study the causes of infectious and immune-mediated diseases, and to develop better means of preventing, diagnosing and treating these illnesses. News releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at http://www.niaid.nih.gov.
About the National Institutes of Health (NIH): NIH, the nation's medical research agency, includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. NIH is the primary federal agency conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational medical research, and is investigating the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
NIH...Turning Discovery Into Health®
NIH scientists assess history, pandemic potential of H7 influenza viruses
2013-07-09
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Urgent call for cardiovascular R&D revival to halt growing CVD epidemic
2013-07-09
Sophia Antipolis -- A resurgence in cardiovascular R&D is urgently needed to curb a new epidemic of cardiovascular diseases, according to leading cardiologists and industry representatives in the Cardiovascular Round Table (CRT).
The CRT is an independent forum established by the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and comprised of cardiologists and representatives of the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The group's views are outlined in "Championing Cardiovascular Health Innovation in Europe", published in European Heart Journal.(1)
Professor Michel Komajda ...
Poorer health for acetaminophen overdose survivors than other liver failure patients
2013-07-09
Spontaneous survivors of acetaminophen overdose have significantly lower overall health compared to survivors or transplant recipients following acute liver failure caused by non-drug induced liver injury according to a new study published online in Liver Transplantation, a journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and the International Liver Transplantation Society. Findings show that acetaminophen overdose survivors report more days of impaired mental and physical health, and activity limitations due to poor health, pain, anxiety and depression. ...
Avoidance strategies can be valuable stress reliever, says study on work/life/school balance
2013-07-09
Toronto – If achieving a work/life balance wasn't hard enough, researchers say many of us are juggling a third factor: school.
That creates conflicts, say Bonnie Cheng, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management, and Julie McCarthy, an associate professor at the Rotman School and the University of Toronto Scarborough, often resulting in dissatisfaction in the area that caused that conflict. For example, skipping a family function to stay late at work can lead to less satisfaction with work.
But avoidance techniques can help, their most ...
Silicon oxide memories transcend a hurdle
2013-07-09
HOUSTON – (July 9, 2013) – A Rice University laboratory pioneering memory devices that use cheap, plentiful silicon oxide to store data has pushed them a step further with chips that show the technology's practicality.
The team led by Rice chemist James Tour has built a 1-kilobit rewritable silicon oxide device with diodes that eliminate data-corrupting crosstalk.
A paper on the new work appears this week in the journal Advanced Materials.
With gigabytes of flash memory becoming steadily cheaper, a 1k nonvolatile memory unit has little practical use. But as a proof ...
Newly identified bone marrow stem cells reveal markers for ALS
2013-07-09
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating motor neuron disease that rapidly atrophies the muscles, leading to complete paralysis. Despite its high profile — established when it afflicted the New York Yankees' Lou Gehrig — ALS remains a disease that scientists are unable to predict, prevent, or cure.
Although several genetic ALS mutations have been identified, they only apply to a small number of cases. The ongoing challenge is to identify the mechanisms behind the non-genetic form of the disease and draw useful comparisons with the genetic forms.
Now, using ...
Did Neandertals have language?
2013-07-09
Fast-accumulating data seem to indicate that our close cousins, the Neandertals, were much more similar to us than imagined even a decade ago. But did they have anything like modern speech and language? And if so, what are the implications for understanding present-day linguistic diversity? The MPI for Psycholinguistics researchers Dan Dediu and Stephen C. Levinson argue in their paper in Frontiers in Language Sciences that modern language and speech can be traced back to the last common ancestor we shared with the Neandertals roughly half a million years ago.
The Neandertals ...
5D optical memory in glass could record the last evidence of civilization
2013-07-09
Using nanostructured glass, scientists at the University of Southampton have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional digital data by femtosecond laser writing. The storage allows unprecedented parameters including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1000°C and practically unlimited lifetime.
Coined as the 'Superman' memory crystal, as the glass memory has been compared to the "memory crystals" used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in ...
Method to improve blood supply to engineered replacement tissues
2013-07-09
New Rochelle, NY -- Next-generation hydrogels can form synthetic scaffolds to support the formation of replacement tissues and organs in the emerging area of regenerative medicine. Embedding peptides into the hydrogels stimulates the growth of essential microvascular networks to ensure a good blood supply. Novel, cutting-edge technology in which hydrogels functionalized with laminin-derived peptides were transplanted in a mouse cornea and were shown to support cell growth and blood vessel formation is described in an article in BioResearch Open Access, a peer-reviewed open ...
Wildfires may contribute more to global warming than previously predicted
2013-07-09
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., July 9, 2013—Wildfires produce a witch's brew of carbon-containing particles, as anyone downwind of a forest fire can attest. A range of fine carbonaceous particles rising high into the air significantly degrade air quality, damaging human and wildlife health, and interacting with sunlight to affect climate. But measurements taken during the 2011 Las Conchas fire near Los Alamos National Laboratory show that the actual carbon-containing particles emitted by fires are very different than those used in current computer models, providing the potential for ...
Robotic ultrasound gives surgeon more direct control in mapping and removing kidney cancers
2013-07-09
DETROIT – While the use of ultrasound to identify tumors during kidney cancer surgery is gaining acceptance, a research team at Henry Ford Hospital has successfully taken it a step further by showing an added benefit when the procedure is done robotically.
Simply put, the kidney surgeon who performs the ultrasound robotically has direct control over the painstaking procedure instead of having to rely on an assistant for part of the task.
The researchers compared the robotic ultrasound probe to the same procedure using a laparoscopic ultrasound probe, which requires an ...