A single bird flu mutation could let it latch easily to human cells -- study

Single bird flu mutation could let it latch easily to human cells, study finds The potential mutation would allow the avian influenza virus sweeping through dairy herds to attach to a receptor protein on the surface of our cells. Mark Johnson The Washington Post

Scientists from the Scripps Research Institute are reporting that it would take just a single mutation in the version of bird flu that has swept through U.S. dairy herds to produce a virus adept at latching on to human cells, a much simpler step than previously imagined.

To date, there have been no documented cases of one human passing avian influenza to another, the Scripps scientists wrote in their paper, which was published Thursday in the journal Science. The mutation they identified would allow the virus to attach to our cells by hitching itself to a protein on their surface, known as the receptor.

William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who did not participate in the study, called the research “sobering,” adding, “I had not known it would take just one mutation in the virus for it to attach itself to the receptors on human cells.”

However, he stressed that the H5N1 virus has been active for 20 years and “has multiplied billions upon billions upon billions of times and the spontaneous mutation that the authors describe,” has not been found, despite intense surveillance.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka, a professor of virology at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the latest research but has studied bird flu extensively, said that statistically, the mutation probably already exists in H5N1-infected cows and humans, given that 1 in 10,000 infectious particles of the influenza virus is a mutant.

James C. Paulson, one of the paper’s authors, and several other top scientists agreed that it is statistically likely the mutation has occurred in the H5N1 virus but stressed that it has yet to be detected, and other barriers remain before the virus could be transmitted from one person to another. Paulson is a professor in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps.

Since reaching North America in late 2021, H5N1 avian influenza has infected more than 700 dairy herds and sickened 58 people in the United States. Most of the people infected were farm workers whose jobs put them in frequent contact with cows or poultry. Most cases have been relatively mild, marked by symptoms such as the eye infection conjunctivitis.

However, scientists and health officials have expressed concern about an infected teenager, who had been hospitalized for more than two weeks in British Columbia as of Nov. 26. (The Office of the Provincial Health Officer and BC Children’s Hospital both declined to say whether the teenager remains hospitalized.)

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A single bird flu mutation could let it latch easily to human cells -- study

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