Latest news with #SeemaLakdawala
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Bird flu mutation associated with increased disease severity found in two cats
A genetic mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus — a mutation associated with increased infectiousness and disease severity — has been found in two cats, in what scientists say is another indication of the risks posed by the virus. The fact that the cats have the mutation "is a continued example of how this virus is evolving in nature and should concern everyone," said Seema Lakdawala, a microbiologist at Emory University in Atlanta. Henry Niman, founder of vaccine research firm Recombinomics Inc., reviewed the sequence data and reported the results to The Times. The gene that Niman identified in the sequence data, known as PB2 E627K, has been associated with increased mammal-to-mammal transmission and disease severity in laboratory animals. It is a similar mutation to the one found in San Bernardino dairy cows earlier this week, but has a slightly different origin. The cows were infected with the B3.13 strain of H5N1 — which has been circulating widely in dairy cows since last March. The cats were infected with the newer D1.1 strain, which is widespread in wild birds — and has also now appeared in a few cattle herds in Nevada and Arizona. Niman said he believed the two cats were based in New Jersey and infected last month based on the scientific nomenclature used to label the genetic sequences. The New Jersey Department of Public Health and Raritan Township, which reported a cluster of infected cats last month in Hunterdon County, couldn't immediately be reached for comment. Since the beginning of 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported 51 H5N1-infected cats. They include both household pets and feral felines, and have been found in 13 states since the beginning of the year, including California, Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and New Jersey. There have been more than 100 reported since last March, when the outbreak was first reported in dairy cows. According to the New Jersey Department of Public Health, the infected cats all lived on the same property. One was feral, another was an indoor/outdoor cat. The living situation of the remaining four cats is unclear. On Thursday, the genetic sequences of H5N1 virus taken from two infected cats were added to GISAID — the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data — a publicly-accessible gene data bank. Richard Webby, an infectious disease expert at St. Jude's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., said the discovery of the mutation wasn't alarming in and of itself. "This mutation has sporadically popped up in other mammal infections over the past few years," he said. "It's an easy change for the H5 viruses to make and it does so relatively frequently." It'll become concerning, he said, if it spreads more widely. There have been no reports of infected humans in New Jersey, and a press release from the state said the people who interacted with the infected cats were asymptomatic. That Feb. 28 release said that the infected cats had no known reported exposures to infected poultry, livestock, or consumption of raw (unpasteurized) milk or meat, "but did roam freely outdoors, so exposure to wild birds or other animals is unknown." Since the outbreak started last March, 70 people in the U.S. have been infected with H5N1; one person has died. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
15-03-2025
- Health
- Los Angeles Times
Bird flu mutation associated with increased disease severity found in two cats
A genetic mutation of the H5N1 bird flu virus — a mutation associated with increased infectiousness and disease severity — has been found in two cats, in what scientists say is another indication of the risks posed by the virus. The fact that the cats have the mutation 'is a continued example of how this virus is evolving in nature and should concern everyone,' said Seema Lakdawala, a microbiologist at Emory University in Atlanta. Henry Niman, founder of vaccine research firm Recombinomics Inc., reviewed the sequence data and reported the results to The Times. The gene that Niman identified in the sequence data, known as PB2 E627K, has been associated with increased mammal-to-mammal transmission and disease severity in laboratory animals. It is a similar mutation to the one found in San Bernardino dairy cows earlier this week, but has a slightly different origin. The cows were infected with the B3.13 strain of H5N1 — which has been circulating widely in dairy cows since last March. The cats were infected with the newer D1.1 strain, which is widespread in wild birds — and has also now appeared in a few cattle herds in Nevada and Arizona. Niman said he believed the two cats were based in New Jersey and infected last month based on the scientific nomenclature used to label the genetic sequences. The New Jersey Department of Public Health and Raritan Township, which reported a cluster of infected cats last month in Hunterdon County, couldn't immediately be reached for comment. Since the beginning of 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has reported 51 H5N1-infected cats. They include both household pets and feral felines, and have been found in 13 states since the beginning of the year, including California, Montana, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and New Jersey. There have been more than 100 reported since last March, when the outbreak was first reported in dairy cows. According to the New Jersey Department of Public Health, the infected cats all lived on the same property. One was feral, another was an indoor/outdoor cat. The living situation of the remaining four cats is unclear. On Thursday, the genetic sequences of H5N1 virus taken from two infected cats were added to GISAID — the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data — a publicly-accessible gene data bank. Richard Webby, an infectious disease expert at St. Jude's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., said the discovery of the mutation wasn't alarming in and of itself. 'This mutation has sporadically popped up in other mammal infections over the past few years,' he said. 'It's an easy change for the H5 viruses to make and it does so relatively frequently.' It'll become concerning, he said, if it spreads more widely. There have been no reports of infected humans in New Jersey, and a press release from the state said the people who interacted with the infected cats were asymptomatic. That Feb. 28 release said that the infected cats had no known reported exposures to infected poultry, livestock, or consumption of raw (unpasteurized) milk or meat, 'but did roam freely outdoors, so exposure to wild birds or other animals is unknown.' Since the outbreak started last March, 70 people in the U.S. have been infected with H5N1; one person has died.
The Guardian
22-02-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Alarm as bird flu now ‘endemic in cows' while Trump cuts staff and funding
A newer variant of H5N1 bird flu has spilled over into dairy cows separately in Nevada and Arizona, prompting new theories about how the virus is spread and leading to questions about containing the ongoing outbreaks. The news comes amid a purge of experts at federal agencies, including employees who were responding to the highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the US Department of Agriculture. The additional spillovers are changing experts' view of how rare introductions to herds may be – with implications for how to prevent such spread. 'It's endemic in cows now. There is no way this is going to get contained' on its own, said Seema Lakdawala, an influenza virologist and co-director of the Center for Transmission of Airborne Pathogens at Emory School of Medicine. The current outbreak is unlikely to end without intervention and needs close attention from the Trump administration to prevent the virus from wreaking more havoc. Yet 'we don't seem to have a handle on the spread of the virus,' said Boghuma Titanji, an infectious disease physician. Bird flu's continued spread is happening against the backdrop of the worst flu season in 15 years, since the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009-10. The spike in seasonal flu cases puts pressure on health systems, makes it harder to detect rare variants like H5N1, and raises the risk of reassortment, where a person or animal infected with seasonal flu and bird flu could create a new, more dangerous variant. 'There's a lot of flu going around, and so the potential for the virus to reassort right now is high,' Lakdawala said. There's also the possibility of reassortment within animals like cows, now that there are multiple variants detected in herds, she pointed out. At the same time, the CDC's seasonal flu vaccination campaigns were halted on Thursday as the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, reportedly called for 'informed consent' advertisements instead. A meeting for the independent vaccine advisers was also postponed on Thursday. The US has also halted communication with the World Health Organization on influenza data. The new spillovers into dairy cattle in Nevada and Arizona, detected through the new bulk milk testing strategy recently implemented in the US, are both related to the D1.1 variant of H5N1, which emerged in the fall and has come to dominate among North American birds. A teenaged girl in British Columbia suffered severe illness and a man in Louisiana died after infection with this variant. In Nevada, a dairy worker was infected after close contact with cows, and genomic sequencing revealed a mutation that has been associated in the past with more effective spread among people. 'These are more opportunities for the virus to continue to adapt, and with adaptation, you worry that we'll ultimately get to a point where we may have a virus that becomes capable of transmitting efficiently between humans, and that then really would change the dynamic of the outbreak,' Titanji said. Lakdawala raised three theories for how bird flu keeps spilling over into cows. The first would be a rare event in which fluids from a sick bird somehow came into contact with a cow's udders – for instance, if a bird defecated into milking equipment. That was a working theory for the first spillover, detected nearly a year ago in Texas cows. But it's rare for birds to have close contact with milking equipment, and for that to happen three times was 'unlikely', Lakdawala said. It's much more common for birds to perch on feeding troughs, where their feces might mix with feed. Usually, cows infected through oral or nasal contact like this don't see the virus spread to their udders. But it could happen in rare events – if a cow is unhealthy, for instance – that bird flu goes systemic and enters mammary tissue, where it replicates in enormous quantities, Lakdawala hypothesized. The third theory? People could be spreading the virus from birds, or another intermediate species, to cows. 'Bird to human infections, we know happen more often,' Lakdawala said. 'It's more likely that somebody handling dead birds or chickens infected with H5 will become infected, and then it's human to cow' transmission. All of these theories need more evidence and research, much of which is now threatened by halts in scientific funding from the Trump administration. Two studies temporarily halted in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report have now been released. Blood tests on 150 veterinarians revealed three of the vets showed recent infection with H5N1. One of the infected vets worked in a state with no cases among cows, and the two others did not realize they had had contact with an H5-positive animal, indicating continued gaps in monitoring spread. A study on two households in Michigan indicated that dairy workers may have spread H5N1 to their indoor cats. Kevin Hassett, director of the national economic council, unveiled the Trump administration's new strategy on CBS's Face the Nation on Sunday in a shift away from trying to contain the outbreak. Previously, officials 'spent billions of dollars just randomly killing chickens within a perimeter where they found a sick chicken', Hassett said. Infected poultry are culled in this manner because they are very unlikely to survive infection, and containment like this can help halt the spread to other animals – and to the people who care for them. Hassett instead broached the idea, without providing more details, of using 'biosecurity and medication' to 'have a better, smarter perimeter'.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
CDC Report Suggests Bird Flu Is Spreading Undetected to Humans
Amidst surging respiratory illnesses and previously controlled diseases like tuberculosis making alarming comebacks, a new CDC report provides further evidence bird flu is spreading undetected to humans. The latest Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, whose publication was delayed, details three cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 in US veterinarians who work with cattle, with two of the cases lacking a clear source of exposure. None of the vets experienced any flu-like symptoms, and human-to-human spread is still undetected, but researchers are concerned this ability may only be a few genetic mutations away. Instead, these cases were detected through antibody tests of 150 veterinarians working across 46 US states in September, revealing bird flu is occurring beyond known zones of infection. One of the veterinarians who tested positive works with livestock in Georgia and South Carolina; neither state has reported bird flu cases in their dairy herds. "There are clearly infections happening that we're missing," Emory University virologist Seema Lakdawala told Emily Anthes at the New York Times. Transmission of H5N1 through cow milk has now been experimentally confirmed. In light of all this, health officials are urging all states to join the national milk testing program. As with any fast-mutating virus, each lapse in containment gives the disease more chances to test random mutations, increasing its opportunity to stumble upon one that will allow it to spread between humans. "If cases are occurring more frequently than detected in humans, we risk missing small changes that allow the virus to begin to spread much more easily in humans," University of Nebraska infectious disease researcher Lauren Sauer told NPR. The first case of human H5N1 in Nevada was reported last week, bringing the total known human cases in the US up to 68. Nevada has also just detected a new H5N1 strain in cows, D1.1, that may be better suited to replicating within mammal cells. "An important part of stopping the transmission of viruses is to track them," Emory University epidemiologist Jodie Guest explained after the US's first human H5N1 death was confirmed on 6 January 2025. But delays in information sharing due to the freeze on communications from some federal health agencies make this already challenging task even more difficult. The removal of CDC data already prompted now-contradicted fears about H5N1 cat-to-human transmissions. KFF Health News reports dairy workers infected cats instead, likely with their work clothing, but this information is still to be released. Data from these health agencies can't currently be accessed elsewhere like they once could. "CDC right now is not reporting influenza data through the WHO global platforms, FluNet [and] FluID, that they've been providing information [on] for many, many years," WHO epidemiologist Maria Van Kerkhove said in a media brief. "We are communicating with them, but we haven't heard anything back." Cases of cat-to-human transmission have occurred with older bird flu strains, but none so far with H5N1. Two more pet cats have been euthanized with the disease after eating raw pet food in Oregon. Meanwhile, health officials are urging us all to keep ourselves and pets away from raw dairy products, avoid feeding pets raw meat, avoid interacting with wildlife, and wear protective gear if handling potentially infected livestock. Signs of infection in animals include fever, drowsiness, lack of coordination, moving in circles, a head tilt, and/or an inability to stand or fly, and should be reported to local authorities. The CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report can be read here. Intense Flu Surge Gripping The US Is The Worst in Years, CDC Says Cars Make One Thing Even More Toxic Than Diesel Fumes, Study Reveals Exercise Boosts Cognition For People With ADHD, Study Reveals
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Americans could be carrying bird flu without symptoms, CDC says
(NewsNation) — More Americans could be unknowingly carrying bird flu, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report follows a series of random tests of 150 veterinarians, including some who did not work in areas with known flu outbreaks among cattle or flocks of chickens. The tests were conducted between January and September of last year and focused on detecting H5N1 antibodies, which would reveal recent exposure to bird flu. Three veterinarians who specialized in cows tested positive for the virus and did not experience flu-like symptoms. Two of the three had no known exposure to animals infected with bird flu. One vet practiced in Georgia and South Carolina, where bird flu had not been reported in cows or humans. OPM directs agencies to fire government workers still on probation The CDC's findings underscore how diseases can easily spread when people are asymptomatic, much like the undetected spread of COVID-19 in 2020. Since April, nearly 70 people have been infected with bird flu across multiple states, including Nevada and Ohio. One person in Louisiana has died. 'We didn't already have a vaccine for coronaviruses that was approved and FDA licensed. We have a seasonal flu vaccine. We have four of them on the market. They can be updated,' said Seema Lakdawala, a professor at Emory University School of Medicine. 'So we also have stockpiled H5N1 vaccines because we've been preparing for an H5N1 pandemic since 2003.' Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has faced scrutiny over his past anti-vaccine stances but told senators last month he supports the development and distribution of bird flu vaccines. The CDC's report was delayed because President Donald Trump's administration instructed federal health agencies to pause all external communications on Jan. 21, which prompted backlash in the medical community. Data shows Americans' trust in U.S. public health agencies such as the CDC has reached an all-time low. In the past month, the price of a dozen eggs jumped nearly 60%. The current price is $7.33, up from $4.61 a month ago and significantly higher than last year's $2.29. Area 51 veterans getting cancer as DOD denies they were there To manage the demand, some grocery stores are limiting the number of eggs customers can purchase. Some restaurants, such as Waffle House, have added an egg surcharge. Small business owners are feeling the pressure. 'It's a tremendous hit,' said Joe Abouhassan, who owns a diner in Ohio. 'I keep biting the bullet, and I don't want to raise the prices. I keep saying, OK, maybe next week it will come down or the week after, but it hasn't. And it doesn't look like it's going to in the immediate future.' With the Easter holiday approaching, egg prices are expected to rise even more. The U.S. Department of Agriculture predicts prices will likely increase another 20%. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
