New bird flu threat could be H9N2

Reuters has a report, on the 12th August 2008, about a new strain of bird flu, H9N2. It says,

Countries around the world may be preparing for a possible H5N1 bird flu pandemic, but another strain called H9N2 also poses a threat to humanity, researchers reported on Tuesday.

Tests on the H9N2 strain of the virus show it is capable of infecting and spreading with very few changes, a team from the University of Maryland, St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, and elsewhere reported.

"Our results suggest that the establishment and prevalence of H9N2 viruses in poultry pose a significant threat for humans," the researchers wrote in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.

Most influenza experts agree that a pandemic -- a deadly global epidemic -- of some kind of flu is inevitable.

Just a few mutations could turn it into a virus that people catch and transmit easily. But flu experts caution H5N1 is not the only virus with this potential.

There are hundreds of strains of avian influenza viruses, but only four -- H5N1, H7N3, H7N7, and H9N2 -- are known to have caused human infections, according to the World Health Organization.

So far Bird Flu has infected 385 people and killed 243 since 2003 and 300 million birds have been slaughtered.