That DEADLY Bird Flu Bush warned us about may not be all that deadly [View All]

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/060917/x091704.html

Reports of missed mild bird flu cases raise questions about scope of spread


(CP) - Recent reports from South Korea and Indonesia of after-the-fact discovery of a handful of mild human cases of H5N1 avian flu have again raised questions about whether the disease's extraordinarily high death rate is being inflated because mild cases are being missed. snip

"Because frankly, one of the indications that there may be a changing epidemiology (disease pattern) with this is in fact if we start seeing larger and larger percentages of individuals who are asymptomatic or only mildly ill that we can clearly confirm as having H5N1 infection."

The World Health Organization announced last week blood tests done on an Indonesian man showed he became infected, likely in May when he helped nurse his sister, a confirmed H5N1 case. The man reported having a cough and abdominal discomfort but his symptoms weren't diagnosed as H5N1-related at the time.

And South Korean officials revealed that testing of blood samples from more than 2,000 workers who culled diseased poultry in late 2003 and early 2004 showed five had developed antibodies to the virus - a sign they had been infected. An earlier round of testing in South Korea turned up four cullers with antibodies.

None of these people had serious illness at the time; none has yet been added to the WHO's official case list. snip

But there has always been a suspicion in some quarters that a significant number of mild cases are being missed - a theory these new reports may fuel.