More Bird Flu Research Goes Public, Has Bad News About Global Pandemic Possibilities

It was just about three years ago that H1N1 made its way onto the 24 hour news cycle, planting itself there like its own kind of virus and fed by good ol’ fashioned fear. You might have chuckled swine flu off as more media overhype — or just looked at it rationally — but maybe deep down you felt a certain special something: loss of control. H1N1 felt sudden and unexpected, like something scientists were puzzling over in an Atlanta bunker while worrying about their families on the outside. Because we’ve all seen too many movies. But then H1N1 was kind of a dud, a more severe version of regular day-to-day flu. Reports had that it sucked terribly to have it — the worst flu you’ve ever had and then some — but we weren’t exactly burning our dead.

Meanwhile, back in 2012, avian flu (H5N1, bird flu) is already a real thing in the world, packing a heavy fatality rate in some parts of the world, but it hasn’t quite found a good transmission vector; we still catch it from birds — far less so, other people, like those found on international flights and packed subway trains and restaurant kitchens. Fortunately, most of us don’t work with poultry. Two pieces of research published today in Science — after months of controversy about their publication — suggests the virus on its way to something new and more easily passed around. Like anything else in the universe, bird flu is highly interested in mutating and evolving, making itself better. Which is worse for us.

Earlier this year, the discussion around bird flu was whether or not to even discuss it. Research on the flu had been done and papers were prepared and ready to publish, but the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity made a rare advisement: don’t publish. Bird flu research is too sensitive to be freely in the world; think of the terrorists, etc. Both the Science and Nature journals determined, however, that this is research needed to be shared for the sake of global health. The more freely information is disseminated, the more researchers across the planet can use that information to find vaccines and develop mitigation measures to prevent the much more likely catastrophe of global pandemic via mutation, not terrorism. In the words of an intro to this week’s bird flu-themed issue of Science, “Breakthroughs in science often occur when a scientist with a unique perspective combines prior knowledge in novel ways to create new knowledge, and the publication of the two research Reports in this issue will hopefully help to stimulate the innovation needed, perhaps from unsuspected sources, to make the world safer.”

In any case, the second of these two would-be censored papers, courtesy of Sandr Herfst of the Netherlands’ Erasmus MC research center, identifies possible mutations in the virus that portend very bad things. Specifically, new lab-created mutations in the virus are allowing it to spread in the air between ferrets, suggesting the ease by the which the virus could produce another mutation, only this time it allows bird flu to spread in the air between humans (like those on subway trains, international flights, etc). The magic number of mutations in bird flu needed for that to happen is five, according to a separate Science paper from Professor Derek Smith and Dr Colin Russell at the University of Cambridge. That is, current RNA needs at least five particular amino acid substitutions (mutations) to become the super-bug of our fears. Sort of: the mutated virus in the ferrets was found to be highly receptive to antiviral treatment and none of the critters actually died.

“Viruses that have two of these mutations are already common in birds, meaning that there are viruses that might have to acquire only three additional mutations in a human to become airborne transmissible,” said Colin Russell, of the Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, in a press release. The next key question is ‘is three a lot, or a little?’"

The researchers broke down the factors that make mutations more or less likely. These include longer infections — the longer an organism has the virus, the more chance it has to mutate; random mutations, e.g. what drives evolution — in an infected human, there are billions of viruses. And every time one replicates, it produces an average of one mutation per new virus. Next, we have existing transmission between mammals. That is, if some of the mutations have happened, we’re that much closer to the five needed humans. Finally, the last two points enabling mutation are, first, more combinations of mutations working together and, second, diversity in genomic mutations, making detection via genetic sequencing less accurate. Meanwhile, there are only three things that make it less likely that the virus will mutate: 1) good immune systems, 2) mutations that are harmful to the virus, and, 3), whether or not mutations need to be aquired in a specific order. We don’t know yet.

Now the race is on, so to speak. “The situation is similar to assessing the risk of an earthquake or tsunami,” said Derek Smith, Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics at the University of Cambridge. “We don’t know exactly when and where, but by increasing monitoring and research – some of which is already underway – scientists and public health officials will be able to increase the accuracy with which the risk can be assessed and to minimise those risks.” If that’s got you worried, Nature has a great breakdown today of five big questions pertaining to the virus, including what makes it so deadly.

Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.

• Much Ado About Bird Flu
• Why The H1N1 Virus Had Such A Small Bite
• So That Superbug Can Jump From Pigs To People