Hope Over 'Bird Flu Test
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Thursday, August 14, 2008
Experts developing a portable testing machine for bird flu in humans say it could save lives by cutting the time it takes to spot potentially lethal cases.
Nottingham Trent University developers say their equipment could cut the wait for results from a week to two hours. In Indonesia there has been an 81% death rate among people with the H5N1 strain, but survival chances increase greatly the earlier it is treated.
Researchers say it could help contain dangerous pandemic forms of the virus. So far, tens of millions of birds have died or been slaughtered as a result of bird flu in Asia and beyond.
At the moment, the H5N1 strain, while highly infectious among poultry, is not easily passed to humans, and cannot be passed from human to human. Scientists fear that a strain of bird flu, possibly H5N1, could eventually mutate and cross the "species barrier".
It could then gain the ability to pass easily from person to person and perhaps lead to a dangerous global pandemic, they fear.
Once it does manage to infect a human, H5N1 is usually a killer. In Indonesia, one of the worst-affected countries, 102 people, mostly those in close contact with infected poultry, have fallen ill, with four out of five dying.
One of the problems is that the early symptoms, such as cough and fever, are shared by other, common infections, delaying diagnosis.
Research published in The Lancet medical journal suggested that development of better diagnostic methods, and better ways of looking after patients could improve their chances.
If identified within a few days, H5N1 can be treated using anti-viral drugs and the chances of survival increase significantly. UK experts have called for a national surveillance programme to detect H5N1 cases in Indonesians. However, Dr Alan McNally, from Nottingham Trent University, believes his technology could make a difference.
All that is needed is a swab of saliva from a patient's mouth, and it can detect molecules specific to H5N1 or other bird flu strains.
Dr McNally said: "There's a large train of thought that one of the best ways of dealing with avian influenza is by detection and containment.
"The ability to detect and type the influenza virus immediately is essential in setting up controls as quickly as possible to minimise the spread of any potential pandemic virus."
The £2.3m project, which hopes to come up with a version of the machine that can fit within a briefcase, is being funded by the European Union.