Bird flu: Human case confirmed in UK

A human case of avian flu infection has been confirmed by British health authorities in Great Britain. The case appears to have involved a farm worker who was in close contact with a large number of infected chickens on a farm, according to the UK Health and Security Agency. The risk of wider public spread among ordinary people who do not work in the same profession continues to be very low, the agency has assured. The findings of recently published research suggest the presence of antibodies in humans that may offer protection against potentially pandemic avian influenza viruses. New research published in Science Immunology indicates that humans have antibodies that recognise strains of the highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1. The study’s authors, representing Harvard Medical School, the Ragon Institute, and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, characterised B cells from 7 healthy donors and identified ‘naïve’ antibodies that had never encountered the antigen. These antibodies recognised a region of the H5-specific hemagglutinin (HA), a surface molecule on influenza viruses, and neutralised H5N1. In addition, the researchers identified cross-reactive naive B cells, which, due to sequence similarity, responded to both H5 and a seasonal variant of the H1N1 virus.