Friday, May 01, 2009

Came Across This Very Informative Article Regarding The Swine Flu

oink

Came across this from Yahoo News: Mexico's Mystery: Why Is Swine Flu Deadlier There?

Most interesting paragraph I found is that:

But the truth is that even though the virus is referred to as swine flu, researchers do not yet know for sure that the A/H1N1 virus actually originated in pigs. There's been no evidence yet of pigs getting sick in either Mexico or the U.S. (Despite several countries' bans on pork imports, it's important to remember that the disease cannot be contracted by eating pork.) The original reservoir for flu viruses is actually wild birds, which can spread infection to domestic birds and people - as we saw with the H5N1 avian flu in Asia - and to pigs. Pigs make particularly good biological mixing bowls since they can be infected by bird-, swine- and human-flu viruses and provide a hospitable environment for the viruses to swap genes and create entirely new strains in a process called reassortment. That is what may have happened with the A/H1N1 swine-flu virus, which contains genes from bird-, pig- and human-flu viruses. "When you get a large concentration of pig farms, people, wild birds and poultry, these things do happen," says Peter Daszak, the president of the Wildlife Trust and an expert on emerging diseases.

Interesting huh?

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