DNR confirms Montcalm County deer found with encephalitis

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has confirmed that a deer found in Montcalm County's Fairplain Township, which is east of Greenville, tested positive for Eastern equine encephalitis. With the addition of this case announced Wednesday, five deer in Michigan recently have tested positive for the deadly disease, which also poses a health risk to humans. Four infected deer were found late last month in neighboring Kent County's Cannon and Plainfield townships. Michigan is only the third state where the disease has turned up in free-ranging white-tailed deer, the DNR said earlier. Georgia and Wisconsin both reported cases in 2001....

York horse dies from EEE; first in Maine

The Maine Department of Health and Human Services has announced that the first mammal in Maine, a horse found in York, has died as a result of contracting the Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) virus. Officials would not say where the horse contracted the virus or where it was when it died. According to statistics provided on the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) website, and confirmed by MDHHS officials, the horse testing positive for EEE was identified by officials in York on Sept. 26. A second horse that tested positive for EEE in Lebanon was identified on Sept. 27. EEE is a viral disease born of birds. The disease is transmitted to humans via mosquito bites from mosquitoes who have become infected by such birds. In humans, the virus can lead to encephalitis, or inflammation of the brain, which can lead to coma and death. Humans cannot contract the disease via contact with mammals that have it. Mosquito bites are the only way the disease can be transmitted to humans....

State testing moose for chronic wasting disease

Moose in North Dakota are now being tested in for chronic wasting disease, wildlife officials say. Randy Kreil, wildlife chief for the state Game and Fish Department, said the testing was prompted by a moose killed in northern Colorado that tested positive for chronic wasting disease last month. It was the first of its species known to have contracted the disease in the wild, officials said. The fatal brain-wasting disease afflicts members of the deer family. Kreil said the state has tested "two or three" moose over the years for the disease. He said the testing was done on the animals because they were either emaciated or displayed unusual behavior. Kreil said results of tests for chronic wasting disease in those moose all have come back negative....

Avian Flu Virus

If a virulent strain of avian influenza ever struck the U.S. poultry industry, this country probably would fare better than many other nations due to careful biosecurity procedures in force. But if the virus develops an ability to pass from one human to another, the United States would have far less protection as the world possibly faces one of the worst flu pandemics in history. Among the U.S. health officials watching the progress of this extraordinarily active virus (known as H5N1) as it infects chickens in Asia and waterfowl in Russia, is Alfonso Torres, director of the Animal Health Diagnostic Center and associate dean for veterinary public policy at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. "The fear is that if the virus changes or recombines with a regular human flu, the virus may acquire the ability to be effectively transmitted from human to human, then it could become the big pandemic that everyone is very concerned about," he says. As a consultant, Torres has held high-level policy discussions on avian flu with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and NATO, among others. For now, the United States, like the rest of the Western world, can only watch and prepare. Since January 2004, the known human cases of avian flu have all struck in Southeast Asia -- out of 120 patients requiring treatment, about half have died. All of these infections were contracted from chickens, with the exception of a few cases in Vietnam where the source is unclear. A natural reservoir for the avian flu virus is migratory waterfowl, and infected birds have been found in Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Russia, raising concern in the U.S. as the disease moves west. Although waterfowl do not appear to be playing a big role in poultry and human transmissions right now, they are being closely monitored....

Asian Bird Flu Bears Likeness to 1918 Pandemic Virus

The Asian bird flu feared for its potential to start a worldwide health catastrophe shares some key genetic features with the 1918 Spanish flu that killed as many as 50 million people worldwide, according to research in this week's issue of the journals Nature and Science. A reconstruction of the chemical makeup of the deadly Spanish flu virus suggests that some samples of the bird flu have developed genetic changes that may allow it to spread from person to person, said Jeffery Taubenberger, a microbiologist at the U.S. Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Rockville, Maryland. The avian flu has killed 59 people in Asia who contracted the virus from contact with domestic or wild fowl. Health officials fear a global epidemic may arise if the virus becomes contagious among people. That's because humans don't have a natural immunity to the so-called H5NI virus, health officials have said. The virus ``might be going down a similar path to 1918,'' Taubenberger said in a briefing with reporters yesterday. His research is being published in Nature. Three worldwide outbreaks of flu occurred in 1918, 1957 and 1968. While all three may have been caused at least partially by viruses from animals, the 1918 flu, by far the most deadly, may have started when a bird virus acquired genetic changes allowing for human-to-human spread, Taubenberger said. By contrast, the 1957 pandemic that killed about 70,000 Americans and the 1968 ``swine flu'' that killed about 34,000 probably emerged when a human and bird virus exchanged genes. The presence of genes from the human virus gave the human immune system some ability to recognize the flu and fight it off, he said....

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