Avian Flu Preparedness Project

Good morning.

Good luck to you and yours.

Michael Frazier

Thanks for the ping. I just noticed.. no posts for a week. Where's Judith Anne?

don't know - looks like she needed to be somewhere else for a while - I am worried that we haven't heard from her for a while - I will freepmail her and let you know...........

Judith's last post was on the 7th and sort of explains her absence. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1453571/posts?page=124#124

On !

On, please

heard from JA tonight - she is still doing her deal and is okay - she says thanks for the prayers but she isn't in a traumatic or bad situation so don't worry about her...
just seems to have something she has to do.

Okay, so everyone go ahead and start posting what they find and we will all cover.

Thanks very much for the update.

Good to hear that Judith is ok. Newsnight with Aaron Brown had a 23 minute report on H5N1 Avian Flu virus with WHO reps and others saying we're not ready and what needs to be done. Gave a good history of the disease and compared it to the pandemic of 1918 which they showed some of the historic photos and people who experienced it. They talked about Bill Frist's plan of a Manhattan Project to pool resources to fight the disease and ramp up for a vaccine. This report was very scary. They actually said that a pandemic flu virus was inevitable and that it could happen this year or next. A transcript of the show would be worth posting.

both added!

just checked the site and the transcript isn't up yet...can you remember to look for it again?

http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/aaron.brown/

Yes I'll check later tonight.

Looks like the only transcript available is Friday's lead story "Judge Rules on Merck". I recorded the avian flu report on my DVR but have no way of transferring it to my computer.

I think they hold over the weekend stuff...

just a round-up of googled news for today...

http://www.nyjournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050821/BUSINESS01/508210305/1066

Sanofi owes bird flu vaccine to Memphis virus hunter
By JOHN LAUERMAN
BLOOMBERG NEWS
(Original publication: August 21, 2005)

In early 1997, virologist Robert Webster flew from his lab in Memphis halfway around the world to Hong Kong to investigate a frightening report: Three people had died from a flu they caught from birds.

Webster spent several days testing the victims' blood and prowling live poultry markets for evidence of the influenza virus. In less than a week he was convinced a deadly new virus had emerged. Webster started calling colleagues.

"I spent the whole night on the telephone," said the 73-year-old Webster in an interview June 27. "I told them to pack their bags and find out where this virus was coming from."

Sanofi-Aventis SA's new vaccine for avian flu that U.S. officials declared a success last weekend grew out of five years of research initiated by the team assembled by Webster. Health officials are hailing Webster's quick identification of the virus's precise chemical structure as one reason for the speedy development of the vaccine.

The new inoculation, the officials said, might save tens of millions of lives worldwide should the deadly virus begin to spread among humans. The virus already is responsible for killing 57 people, or 50 percent of those who have caught the flu from tending or butchering infected birds, according to international health officials.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC, ID Biomedical Corp., MedImmune Inc. and Chiron Corp. are racing to develop other versions of the vaccine to meet a potential global demand that health officials say may run into the billions of doses.

The market for a vaccine that could be produced in time to respond to a global epidemic would easily reach $1 billion, said Aaron Geist, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co. in Milwaukee, in an interview this month.

Sanofi, based in Paris, declined to comment on its plans. An ID Biomedical spokesman, Dean Linden, said the company's production will depend on the amount of vaccine needed for each dose. Alison Marquiss, a Chiron spokeswoman, said the company was unsure of its pandemic vaccine production plans. A Glaxo spokeswoman didn't return phone calls.

The bird virus, called A(H5N1), is infecting wild and farm-bred birds in growing numbers in parts of China, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. This past week it was reported in Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan. To stem the spread, governments in these countries have ordered the killing of 150 million chickens. The European Union banned poultry from several Southeast Asian nations.

Webster has tracked influenza episodes around the world for three decades. In recent years he has been warning that if the avian flu ever begins spreading from people to people, it might cause the worst pandemic since the "Spanish" flu in 1918 killed 50 million people worldwide. That's because humans lack the kind of immunity to the bird virus they have against the flu that surfaces every winter.

An avian flu outbreak among people will dwarf the problems caused by SARS, the new respiratory virus that circulated in Southeast Asia in 2003, health officials say.

In Singapore, where 33 infected people died, gross domestic product shrank 11.4 percent in the second quarter of 2003. Personal bankruptcies in Hong Kong, where the virus killed 299 people, rose 39 percent in the first seven months of that year. Canada, the hardest hit country outside Asia with 43 deaths, saw its largest tourism deficit in a decade at C$4.3 billion.

Webster said he's convinced that the U.S. should begin stockpiling hundreds of millions of doses of the experimental vaccines, and consider inoculating people now.

"I would certainly be lined up to take it," he said.

Webster's team at St. Jude Children's Research Center in Memphis receives frequent shipments from the Hong Kong lab containing vials of the virus extracted from wild and domestic fowl, and also from infected humans. The lab is monitoring genetic mutations the virus picks up as it moves among bird populations. The lab's goal is to catch the earliest signs that a new strain able to spread among people has emerged in Asia.

Two researchers in Webster's laboratory, Eric Hoffman and Richard Webby, take the samples mailed from Asia and inject the virus into ferrets, the animal that responds to bird flu most like humans. They then isolate the virus from the infected ferrets' blood and analyze its changing viral makeup.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/siberian-farm-quarantined-for-bird-flu/2005/08/21/1124562751526.html?oneclick=true

Siberian farm quarantined for bird flu
By Peter Finn
Moscow
August 22, 2005

RUSSIAN officials have quarantined a large poultry farm in Siberia because of a suspected outbreak of bird flu.

If confirmed, it would be the first major occurrence of the lethal virus among birds in Russia. International health officials expressed concern that the disease had spread closer to Western Europe.

About 142,000 birds are being monitored at a commercial farm in the Omsk region of Siberia, about 2400 kilometres east of Moscow, the Russian news agency Interfax reported, quoting a federal agency that tracks the disease. The presence of the H5N1 strain of avian influenza was reported last month in Siberia, but only among wild birds and free-range chickens on small family farms.

Avian influenza has killed at least 61 people in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia since early last year, mostly farmers and poultry workers in close contact with the animals. Millions of birds have been slaughtered in Asia in an attempt to control the disease.

The World Health Organisation has warned that the viral strain affecting chickens, ducks and wild fowl could develop into a form that spreads easily among humans. The means of transmission is unclear, and it is not known whether it can be passed by eating infected poultry.

Thursday the Russian poultry industry, in an effort to reassure consumers, was stressing that the outbreak had not affected any birds on commercial farms.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=10341844

Migrating birds bring fear of avian flu
22.08.05 5.20am

Migratory ducks and waders could bring bird flu to western Europe this northern winter, experts have warned, after the disease was found in wild flocks in Russia.

The potentially lethal avian flu virus is now spreading westwards after health experts in Siberia and Kazakhstan discovered outbreaks of the virus H5N1 in birds that will soon enter Europe.

Yesterday, as the total number of confirmed cases in Russia hit 40, authorities revealed the first suspected case of the virus at a commercial chicken farm in the western Siberian region of Omsk. A further 78 villages have suspected cases.

http://www.thecouriermail.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5936,16337542%255E462,00.html

Biota flu drug no longer on the nose
By Richard Gluyas
22aug05
PHARMACEUTICAL giant GlaxoSmithKline is in talks with more governments interested in stockpiling the anti-flu drug Relenza in case of a global flu pandemic.

The Financial Times reported GSK had confirmed it was talking to "a number of other countries over similar deals" to a recent order by the German Government.

Shares in Biota Holdings, the small Melbourne-based biotech that conceived Relenza, surged earlier this month when GSK confirmed the German order for 1.7 million packs of the drug.

GSK is defending Biota's Victorian Supreme Court claim that the company breached a licensing agreement by failing to market Relenza internationally.

Confirmation of the German order came as a surprise, because Relenza has a tiny presence in the stockpiling segment, which is dominated by the rival product Tamiflu, marketed by Roche.

The FT also said the respected medical journal The Lancet had argued that Relenza should be stockpiled together with Tamiflu in readiness for any avian flu pandemic.

The Lancet said the drugs had similar efficacy but Relenza had fewer adverse reactions and a favourable resistance profile.

GSK launched Relenza for the 1999-2000 flu season.

However, the FT said sales had failed to match expectations, with revenues last year of just pound stg. 3 million ($7 million).

Roche had $US460 million ($610 million) in sales of Tamiflu for the first half of the year.

GSK has blamed the low sales on slow flu seasons, an inefficient method of delivery through an inhaler and on complications associated with storage of the drug for pandemic flu.

Biota, on the other hand, has said Relenza fell off GSK's radar screen after a big merger, and the pharmaceutical giant failed to support the drug to the extent that the licensing agreement stipulated.

Biota chief executive Peter Molloy said earlier this month that GSK last year had spent less than $US200,000 marketing Relenza to doctors. That compared with $US30 million in the US alone in the first year of Relenza's release, a figure that did not include liaison work with governments for potential stockpiling orders.

In late July, Biota assessed the damages it had suffered in a range of $308-$430 million.

The company said the lower figure was based on a conservative growth scenario for Relenza, while the higher figure assumed "moderate" growth.

Both scenarios assume the drug would have achieved a global market share of 40 per cent, instead of the current 1 per cent, and regulatory approval for Relenza to be used for flu prevention as well as treatment.

Biota earns a 7 per cent royalty from sales of Relenza, some of which it passes on to the CSIRO for its role in discovering the drug. Royalties in the 2005 financial year were about $500,000.

http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/swissinfo.html?siteSect=107&sid=6023416&cKey=1124641837000

Expert sheds light on spread of bird flu
swissinfo August 21, 2005 4:20 PM

Humans are more likely to contract the virus after exposure to infected birds (Keystone)
Following the news that bird flu has spread into Russia, swissinfo spoke to expert Christian Leumann about the virus and its consequences for humans.

Swiss officials announced last week that they had started an avian flu information campaign for poultry farmers.

The first Russian cases of bird flu were detected in a Western Siberian region in July, having seemingly spread from southeast Asia where more than 50 people have died from the virus.

On Thursday the Federal Veterinary Office confirmed it had started an information campaign to raise awareness about the virus among poultry farmers. It extended the ban on birds and poultry from Asian countries to Russia and Kazakhstan earlier this month.

The Federal Health Office has also announced that it is to build a reserve of vaccine to protect up to 100,000 people against the avian virus.

The bird flu virus is known to be particularly aggressive and can be transmitted to humans. It is said to be fatal in 50 per cent of cases, compared with just one per cent for normal strains of flu.

Leumann, a professor of bioorganic chemistry at Bern University, explained how the virus is transmitted between species and what can be done to contain it.

swissinfo: Why is it that many flu viruses originate in southeast Asia?

Christian Leumann: Flu viruses spread and mutate particularly fast in regions where birds, people and other animals live together in a small, agricultural areas which are not subject to the best hygienic conditions. This is the case in southern China for example.

swissinfo: The flu virus is in constant mutation. How come the virus, which is normally transmitted between animals, is now being found in humans?

C.L.: This is nothing new – viruses have always done this. The transmission of the flu virus between different species has been particularly well researched.

Flu viruses develop and change through mutations and individual forms of these viruses can suddenly jump between species. In the bird flu case only the virus H5N1 affects humans as well as birds.

swissinfo: What happens then?

C.L.: These originally animal viruses can change more quickly through the genetic exchange with human flu viruses. This leads to new forms of viruses, which are harder for the body's immune system to manage.

swissinfo: There has been a lot of talk the drug Tamiflu. How well can it fight bird flu?

C.L.: Tamiflu at the moment stops viral reproduction. There are not yet any resistance problems. Viruses change quickly and often become resistant to medications. It's the same as with antibiotics.

If a medication is taken as a precautionary measure, or much worse, put into poultry feed, the virus will certainly become more resistant more quickly. Such behaviour is irresponsible and does not conform to international standards.

swissinfo: Is this the reason Tamiflu is only available on prescription?

C.L.: This could be one of the reasons. In any case this is a prime example of the necessity of being careful with one of the few medications that works against the virus.

swissinfo: Is this careful approach particularly important at the moment given that there aren't any vaccines that work yet?

C.L.: Yes because the current viruses are considered to be particularly virulent. For birds they mean almost certain death.

Finding a vaccine against these new viruses still needs time – six months or longer. This reminds me of what happed around the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) scare, where a vaccine was also needed.

swissinfo-interview: Alexander Künzle

The health professional interviewed on cnn friday was not at all enchoraged by the "new vaccine" announced a week or so ago. He said they found that the amount required per dose to counter H5N1 was so large that only a few hundred thousand patients could be treated this flu season if needed in the USA.

I have had the flu vaccine for a couple of years now and I have had autoimmune arthritis for the past 28 years. Many elderly patients with the osteo arthritis condition routinely get the vaccine. Aside from that, there is educated skepticism that the new wonder vaccine will work.

Thanks for the info. I usually get the flu every year and it is not a pleasant experience, but since I have allergies to many medicines I am always leery about taking any I haven't taken before...

I have had the flu vaccine for a couple of years now and I have had autoimmune arthritis for the past 28 years.

My immunology class in grad school included an interesting test that each of us did on a sample of our own blood. The blood was mixed on a slide with a couple of drops of a mixture that contained very tiny teflon balls. The antibodies in the blood plasma coat the teflon balls. If there are auto-immune elements in your blood, the balls of antibody coated teflon will clump. I watched some other students rock slides for 10 minutes with no effect. When it was my turn to participate, it took 3 tips of the slide to clump the whole sample. That was 1976. I'm in for some autoimmune consequences eventually.

Scientists Race To Head Off Lethal Potential Of Avian Flu
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/22/AR2005082201365.html

'
By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 23, 2005; Page A01

Robert G. Webster is watching his 40-year-old hunch about the origin of pandemic influenza play out before his eyes. It would be thrilling if it were not so terrifying.

Four decades ago, Webster was a young microbiologist from New Zealand on a brief sojourn in London. While he was there, he did an experiment that pretty much set the course of his scientific career. In just a few hours, he showed that the microbe that swept the globe in 1957 as "Asian flu" bore an unmistakable resemblance to strains of virus carried by certain birds in the years before.

Robert G. Webster, right, fights flu at St. Jude in Memphis, with aides David Walker, left, Scott Krauss and Kelly Jones. (By Dave Darnell -- Memphis Commercial Appeal)
Webster's observation was a surprise -- and a troubling one. It suggested an origin of the unusually virulent strains of influenza virus that appear two or three times each century. His hunch, that at least some of these pandemic strains were hybrids of bird and human flu viruses, was correct.

Since then, Rob Webster has become arguably the world's most important eye on animal influenza viruses. These days, he is deeply worried about what he's seeing.

Strains of influenza virus known as A/H5N1 have been spreading in wild and domestic birds across Southeast Asia and China since 1996. In recent weeks, the virus has apparently struck poultry in Siberia and Kazakhstan.

Since late 2003, about 100 million domesticated birds -- mostly chickens and ducks -- either have died of the virus or have been intentionally killed to keep the viruses from spreading. But what has Webster and other experts so worried are the 112 people who have been infected with the H5N1 "bird flu," more than half of whom have died. The fatality rate of 55 percent outstrips any human flu epidemic on record, including the epochal Spanish flu of 1918 and 1919 that killed at least 50 million people.

Why this new virus is so deadly is not entirely understood, although scientists have hints.

Influenza viruses invade cells lining the throat and windpipe, where they replicate and cause inflammation but are eventually suppressed by the immune system. In some cases, the microbe invades the lungs and leads to viral or bacterial pneumonia. Some H5N1 strains, however, have two features that make them even more dangerous.

Normally, the flu viruses can replicate only in the throat and lungs. With H5N1, however, the protein that triggers replication can be activated in many other organs, including the liver, intestines and brain. What is usually a respiratory infection can suddenly become a whole-body infection. Simultaneously, a second "defect" in the virus unleashes a storm of immune-system chemicals called cytokines. In normal amounts, cytokines help fight microbial invaders. In excessive amounts, they can cause lethal damage to the body's own tissues.

The trait H5N1 has not acquired is the ability to spread easily from person to person. The 112 human cases since late 2003 may turn out to be simply rare events in a bird epidemic that will eventually subside, as all epidemics do.

What is worrisome, though, is evidence pointing the other way.'..........

Flight H5N1 is approaching Britain
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/main.jhtml?xml=/health/2005/08/23/nflu21.xml&sSheet=/health/2005/08/23/ixhmain.html

Deadly bird flu strain confirmed in Kazakh villages
http://www.swisspolitics.org/en/news/index.php?section=int&page=news_inhalt&news_id=6029461

Nation watching, waiting for flu pandemic
http://www.sitnews.us/0805news/082305/082305_shns_pandemic.html