Scientists: More Work Needed on Animal Virus Link
Date: 14-Jan-04
Country: UK
Author: Patricia Reaney
About 35 new infectious diseases such as AIDS and SARS have been identified since the 1970s and the primary source for new human infections has been animal-borne viruses.
"Most of these major emerging infection problems that we face are infections of animals jumping over to humans. We really need to understand this animal-human interface much better," Professor Malik Peiris, a SARS expert at the University of Hong Kong told a meeting of leading scientists in London.
Doctors and epidemiologists are focused on human health while veterinarians are concerned with animal welfare. Although an animal virus poses the biggest potential risk of the next pandemic, little research is being done into viruses in healthy animals that could pose a risk to humans.
"That type of work is very minimal -- people looking at healthy animals, or in the case of SARS at wild animal populations, to see the viruses they carry," said Peiris.
"It is this area that needs to be strengthened in terms of getting a better understanding of potential risks to human health."
He added that the deaths of three people in Vietnam from a "bird flu" is a cause for great concern. Six people in Hong Kong died after being infected with an avian flu in 1997.
"The avian flu has been evolving quite dramatically over the last few years and it really poses a human threat," Peiris said.
Civet cats, weasel-like animals that are a local delicacy in China, are the suspected source of SARS which first emerged in Guangzhou, China in 2002, infecting more than 8,000 people in nearly 30 countries and killing nearly 800.
Since last week, China has reported two confirmed and one suspected case of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
Professor Nan Shan Zhong, of the Guangzhou Respiratory Disease Research Institute in China told the London meeting the cases were picked up early, isolated and that measures were taken to control the source.
Doctors do not have any clues about how the first case was infected and suspect the second is linked to an animal market.
"There have been no transmissions beyond the individuals," he told journalists.
Professor Tony McMichael, of the Australian National University in Canberra, echoed the need for more coordination between scientists working in different areas.
"This is a systems-based problem and we are going to have to bring together these different research disciplines that have to do with human biology and epidemiology, with veterinary science and with plant biology," McMichael said.
But although the threat of new infections remains, governments and health experts seem to be getting better at dealing with them.
"We have been much better prepared this time around than we were last year," Peiris said, referring to SARS.