Warm Turkish Climate Rears Dangerous Strain of Bird Flu

The strain of bird flu identified in the people stricken by the disease in Turkey may be a mutation of the previously known strains, and it may have become more dangerous for man.

This conclusion has been made by expert virologists of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the specialized British Medical Research Council (MRC) in Mill Hill near London, where two cases of deaths from bird flu virus Н5N1 were studied.

The virus that struck one of the deceased patients has been found to have "mutations in the system of fixation of the receptors", says a joint WHO-MRC statement. One of such mutations was registered in several cases in Hong-Kong in 2003 and Vietnam in 2005.

A peculiarity of this mutant strain is that it attacks rather human cells than avian ones.

The document also says that the two virus samples taken from the deceased patients in Turkey "are quite similar to bird flu virus Н5N1 identified in birds in Turkey and much alike the virus found during the mass epidemic of birds of passage at the Qinghai Lake Reserve in China at the end of April of 2005".