A new deadly virus threatens humanity
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ennahar/ M. Oudina
According to the French “Le Parisien”, in its electronic edition of December 6, Dutch researchers would have developed a new flu virus, very dangerous. An experiment that worries
- According to the French “Le Parisien”, in its electronic edition of December 6, Dutch researchers would have developed a new flu virus, very dangerous. An experiment that worries
Dutch researchers have just created a virus highly contagious and potentially deadly to humans, at the point that the American Bio-security agency (NSABB) recommends blocking the publication of their study, initially planned in the magazine "Science".
"I know of no organization that scares more than that. Compared to it, anthrax is does not frighten at all," said Paul Keim, president of the American bio-security agency. The experiment was conducted by the serious Erasmus Medical Centre of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, specializing in bird flu. In seeking to understand this virus and to find new ways to counter it, Professor Ron Fouchier and his team have mutated an H5N1 influenza virus and created, at the same time, the ideal of propagation from human to human.
For now, the circulating H5N1 is not transmitted from human to human but only from animals to humans. Since 2003 it has caused 331 deaths in the world and the planet dreads it mutes and exterminates a large part of the inhabitants of the globe.
"To get there, the Dutch scientists conducted an experiment on ferrets, an animal model closest to humans because of its biological behaviour," says Vincent Enouf, deputy director of the National Reference Centre for Avian Influenza at Pasteur Institute. The researchers first conducted three genetic mutations in the avian virus so that it can infect ferrets. They used them to infect the animals - .
- They found that H5N1 had mutated two more times and now it was transmitted from ferret to ferret. But this super virus, never seen in nature, may well be similar in all respects to the human mutant virus since 2003 dreaded all over the world.
- Ennaharonline/ M. O.
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