Springhill medical: Highly Pathogenic H5N1

http://springhillgroupsite.bravesites.com/entries/general/springhill-medical-highly-pathogenic-h5n1

Influenza A virus or more known to us as H5N1 is an avian (bird) flu, an influenza A subtype that has caused outbreaks in domestic poultry in parts of Asia and the Middle East.  This is deadly to them and is considered “highly pathogenic” meaning highly disease causing.  Although the virus does not usually infect people but infectious that these viruses occurred in humans.  Most of these cases have resulted from people having direct or close contact with H5N1-infected poultry or H5N1-contaminated surfaces.

 

There are three types of viruses, A, B, and C, that can cause flu to human.  The type A is characterized not only to human but to other mammals and birds too.  The virus transmitted by air.  The type A virus is composed of two obligatory protein components. One is called hemagglutinin and is lettered H, and the other—neuraminidase (N).  And there are 13 variants of hemagglutinin and 9 of neuraminidase, which then can characterized what type of virus it is.  Making H5N1 is just out of the many possible variants of the virus structure.

Many parts of the world has been infected by the virus such as Asia, parts of Europe, the Near East Africa, birds as well as half of the humans infected did not survive.  The outbreaks infected poultry and wild birds, and humans who have direct contact with the infected animal.  In most cases, healthy children and young adult and have resulted from direct contact with H5N1-infected poultry or contaminated surfaces were infected.

The H5N1 virus does not infect humans easily and in general it remains very rare disease in people.  If the person is infected it is not that easy to spread it to another human.  However, there has been some human-to-human spread of the virus although it is limited.