Almost a year after the first cases of avian flu were spotted in the United States cattle herd, American authorities announced that a first person had died of the disease on Monday January 6 in Louisiana. Health authorities and researchers are closely observing the mutations occurring in the virus taken from this 65-year-old man infected through contact with backyard birds themselves contaminated by wild birds. The question everyone is now trying to answer is whether bird flu is now a serious threat to human health.
To analyze the degree of adaptation of this influenza virus of avian origin to mammals, and more precisely to humans, “researchers are actively monitoring around seventy mutations whose functions are known”explains Gilles Salvat, deputy director general of the National Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health Safety (ANSES). Their attention is focused more particularly on the mutations occurring in three segments of the virus.
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