Washington, Jun 30: Researchers in China have discovered a new type of swine flu that is capable of triggering a pandemic, according to a study published Monday in the US science journal PNAS.
Named G4, it is genetically descended from the H1N1 strain that caused a pandemic in 2009.
It possesses "all the essential hallmarks of being highly adapted to infect humans," say the authors, scientists at Chinese universities and China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The researchers then carried out various experiments including on ferrets, which are widely used in flu studies because they experience similar symptoms to humans -- principally fever, coughing and sneezing.
G4 was observed to be highly infectious, replicating in human cells and causing more serious symptoms in ferrets than other viruses.
Tests also showed that any immunity humans gain from exposure to seasonal flu does not provide protection from G4.
According to blood tests which showed up antibodies created by exposure to the virus, 10.4 percent of swine workers had already been infected.
The tests showed that as many as 4.4 percent of the general population also appeared to have been exposed.
The virus has therefore already passed from animals to humans but there is no evidence yet that it can be passed from human to human -- the scientists' main worry.
"It is of concern that human infection of G4 virus will further human adaptation and increase the risk of a human pandemic," the researchers wrote.
The authors called for urgent measures to monitor people working with pigs.
"The work comes as a salutary reminder that we are constantly at risk of new emergence of zoonotic pathogens and that farmed animals, with which humans have greater contact than with wildlife, may act as the source for important pandemic viruses," said James Wood, head of the department of veterinary medicine at Cambridge University.
A zoonotic infection is caused by a pathogen that has jumped from a non-human animal into a human.
Comments
Police busy in protecting cows.....
Saudi Arabia is the peaceful country than Our India. Why?
Because Islamic rule is there.
Exactly jeevan ...they are taught to slit the throat in the name of festival .so their No's are always high in slitting the throat of nation ( anti national activities )...soon. It will back fire ..and also back firing ....Israel showed the model ...Myanmar replicated ....now Americans duplicating it ...we Indians who are proud to say bharat mata ki jai must follow Israelis ...nobody shoeing sympathy for pellet gun attack except sicular and ummah gang ...it shows everything
@jeevan...
My dear we are doing animal slaughter to eat only....
You are also doing human slaughter even today killing women and children and sacrificing for maa kaali and other gods...correct your wrong number first...cow slaughter or eating wa
@ Jeevan # 9
We can say in other words,
Animals are valued over human.
Like you is nt it faizhal Bhai ......haha...enree innu Dana kadilikke hogilva ?
It is now proved that Islamic state ordering killings in Karnataka as they get free hand in khangrace govt ...proud billava youth died becoz of Islamic millitants ....rip charan ....chutiya log ..if they have guts they shud face directly ...not infront of kid ...
Take his wife and auto driver in police custody, truth may come out in a day.
These buggers should never get married.... understand naren and viren
when bajaragdal member killed by some pfi or kfd activists he will became rowdy sheeter. if anything happens ulta, in headline bajrangdal name will pop up
for animal slaughterers its easy to slaughter humans also.
his sin will follow him.
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