H10N8 New bird flu virus in China

Chinese researchers are rediscovering variant of the bird flu virus

05/02/2014

In China, more and more infections with the novel bird flu virus are recorded. While health authorities are still fully involved in controlling H7N9 infections, a new virus has already appeared: H10N8. „We report the first human infection with a novel influenza A virus H10N8“, Chinese scientists write in the journal „The Lancet“.

Human infections with various avian influenza viruses, such as H5N1, H9N2 or H7N9, have raised considerable concerns among experts. A global pandemic is feared if the pathogens become transmissible through human-to-human mutations. With the discovery of the new bird flu virus H10N8, this concern has intensified. Although Chinese health authorities have taken numerous preventive measures over the past few months in view of the growing prevalence of H7N9 infections, China currently appears to be a veritable hotbed of new variants of avian influenza viruses. Not least due to the close contact between humans and birds, for example on the poultry markets, transmissions and mutations of the pathogens are increasingly observed here.

Numerous deaths from H7N9 infections
Currently, China is still struggling with the H7N9 infection wave, which has seen 26 deaths and more than 110 new cases since the beginning of the year. With the current Chinese New Year, a significant increase in infections is expected here. Due to the risk of infection, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned travelers to China, among other things, before visiting poultry farms and markets, entering areas where poultry are slaughtered, and coming in contact with poultry faeces. Also, according to WHO should be paid special attention to personal hygiene.

New variant of bird flu virus identified
The new bird flu virus H10N8 was first detected in December last year in a 1973-year-old patient in the capital of East China's Jiangxi Province, according to the research team led by Professor Yuelong Shu of the National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention. On November 30, she was hospitalized in Nanchang Hospital because of severe bird flu symptoms. Nine days after hospital admission, the patient had died of multiple organ failure. In the subsequent laboratory examination of aspirate samples from the trachea, the researchers were able to identify the new variant of the H10N8 virus by a sequence analysis. „The epidemiological study found that the patient had visited a poultry market four days before the onset of the disease“, Professor Yuelong Shu and colleagues describe the route of infection. The pandemic potential of the novel H10N8 virus should not be underestimated, as the virus has genetic properties that allow a rapid increase in the human organism.

Growing danger of a pandemic
Faced with the re-emergence of a human pathogenic variant of an avian influenza virus, the health authorities are growing fearful of a significant widening of the wave of infection in China. Due to the close coexistence of humans and poultry, especially in rural areas, the pathogens can not only easily pass from animals to humans, but also new mutations of the viruses develop. This increases the risk of bird flu viruses that can be transmitted from person to person. If this were to happen, the avian influenza pandemic would be the likely consequence, experts estimate. (Fp)

Picture: Gerd Altmann