Why We Care About Chicken Flu
August 4, 2015 | Terry Sharrer
It has been nearly a century since the Great Influenza, when an avian influenza mutated to infecting pigs and people. In its six month wake, as many as one hundred million people died—on top of the mortality from the First World War. This piece reports that virologists at Kansas State University have recombined the attenuated vaccine virus for Newcastle disease with an antigen gene for H5N1 avian influenza to produce a vaccine for both of these poultry infections. This approach also has potential for vaccinating against other epizootic diseases that endanger human health. MORE