A duck hunter and two wildlife workers in Iowa have tested positive for a nonlethal form of avian flu, according to a team of U.S scientists. Their study is the first to suggest that bird flu can be transmitted to humans from wild birds.
"We did not detect H5N1, the virus that has caused such a high death rate in the humans it has infected," said the study's lead author, James Gill, who is a disease specialist at the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory in Iowa City.
Instead the researchers found that the infection was caused by the H11 virus, a strain commonly found in ducks, geese, and shorebirds but not previously associated with human illness.
The study was conducted as part of ongoing surveillance efforts to track diseases that could be transmitted from animals to humans.
(See National Geographic magazine's "Tracking the Next Killer Flu.")
The research involved 39 duck hunters and 68 wildlife experts from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
Their blood serum was tested for traces of antibodies against the influenza virus. Antibodies are signs of infection.
"Our research found that one duck hunter and two of the wildlife professionals had been infected with the H11 virus, likely caught from wild waterfowl," Gill said.
The findings appear in the August issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Virus Mutated?
It is still not clear what possible adaptations the H11 virus may have undergone to infect the human hosts or how exactly it may have spread to them.
"We did not isolate the virus from the three infected persons. Our [test] was designed to detect antibodies in their blood," Gill said.
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