Design, Science and Technology

 

Genetic changes to avian influenza viruses have led to spread among many wild species, creating an uncontrollable global outbreak. Researchers studying the evolution of the bird flu virus over the past 18 years have shown how the strain currently circulating worldwide, an extremely deadly form of the H5N1 subtype, has become increasingly infectious to wild birds. The strain emerged in Europe in 2020, and has spread to an unprecedented number of countries. The study, published in Nature on the 18th October 2023 looked at changes to the virus’s genome over time and used data on reported outbreaks to track how it spread. In 2020, the rate of spread among wild birds was three times faster than that in farmed poultry, because of mutations that allowed the virus to adapt to diverse species. “What was once very clearly a poultry pathogen has now become an animal-health issue much more broadly,” says Andy Ramey, a wildlife geneticist at the US Geological Survey Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. “That has implications for wildlife and domestic poultry as well as us humans that rely upon these resources.”

 

Research Cited published in Nature (Oct. 18, 2023):

 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06631-2 

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

Via Juan Lama, Dr. Stefan Gruenwald