Bird Flu
Chicken market in Xining, Qinghai province, China. Creative Commons

Researchers have discovered a new strain of bird flu that can be transmitted from human to human. The Influenza A (H7N9) is a subgroup of viruses that normally affect birds, although there have been cases of humans who have contracted it after having contact with sick poultry.

However, passing the virus from one human to another human hadn't occurred until now. The first case happened in China, where researchers have suggested that a father passed the virus onto his daughter.

After studying the case that dated back in March, a research team concluded that H7N9 could be transmissible between humans but only slightly.

Experts stressed it does not mean the virus has developed the ability to spread easily between humans.

The 32-year-old woman had become infected after caring for her 60-year-old father in the hospital. Unlike her father, who had visited a poultry market in the week before falling ill, she had no known exposure to live poultry but started developing similar symptoms six days after her last contact with him.

Both died in intensive care of multiple organ failure.

In order to determine if the daughter indeed contracted the virus from her father, researchers from the Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention performed tests on the viruses from both victims. They discovered that the strains were very close to being genetically identical.

The researchers then tested 43 other people who might have come into close contact with either of the infected patients. All of these people tested negative for H7N9, which suggested that the virus was barely contagious.

"It is also notable that the transmission occurred between blood relatives," said Dr. Peter Horby, a bird flu expert at Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in a statement. Horby, who was not involved in the latest study, noted there is some evidence that genetic factors may make some people more susceptible to bird flu.

"To observe some transmission of H7N9 from human-to-human ... does not necessarily indicate the virus is on course" to spark a pandemic, wrote James Rudge of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is based at Mahidol University in Thailand, and Richard Coker of the National University of Singapore.

"It would be a worry if we start to see longer chains of transmission between people, when one person infects someone else, who in turn infects more people, and so on," Dr. Rudge added. "And particularly if each infected case goes on to infect, an average of more than one other person, this would be a strong warning sign that we might be in the early stages of an epidemic."

The H7N9 bird flu strain was first reported by Chinese authorities in March. There have been 134 cases including 43 deaths in China and Taiwan linked to the virus, the World Health Organization reported in July for the agency's most recent update on the outbreak.

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