News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia launched a month-long, nationwide media campaign today to warn people to take precautions against H5N1 avian influenza, according to news services.

Sept 7, 2006 (CIDRAP News) – In a human trial in China, a whole-virus H5N1 avian influenza vaccine generated an immune response with a relatively low dose of antigen, suggesting that it could be used to immunize more people than may be possible with some other vaccines under development.

(CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization today recognized three more cases of H5N1 avian influenza in Indonesia, including one reported by the government yesterday and two dating back to 2005.

(CIDRAP News) – A controlled study of H5N1 influenza patients in Vietnam has provided fresh evidence that explosive viral growth and the resulting cytokine storm, or excessive immune response, account for the often lethal nature of H5N1 disease.

(CIDRAP News) – Live-virus vaccines made from a combination of H5N1 avian influenza virus and another flu strain protected laboratory mice and ferrets from deadly infection with several different H5N1 strains, according to a report published yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – A new project to help improve control strategies for avian influenza has been initiated in eight Asian countries, the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) announced yesterday.

(CIDRAP News) – South Korea said last week that five workers who helped cull poultry nearly 3 years ago showed evidence of past infection with H5N1 avian influenza though they had never been ill.

The Sep 15 report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency said the five workers had tested positive for antibodies to the H5N1 virus but had never had symptoms.

(CIDRAP News) – A study in which mice were infected with the resurrected 1918 Spanish influenza virus has yielded fresh evidence for the view that the virus could trigger a suicidal immune response—one that has often been compared with the effects of the H5N1 avian flu virus on susceptible humans.

(CIDRAP News) – Indonesia reported its 69th H5N1 avian influenza case today, in the 21-year-old sister of an 11-year-old boy who died of the same disease on Sep 18.

The woman from the Tulungagung district of East Java tested positive for H5N1 today, 4 days after she was hospitalized, according to a Bloomberg News report. The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed her 11-year-old brother's case on Sep 25.