Suspect H5N1 in Geese in Hungary
Recombinomics Commentary
January 22, 2007
Five geese found dead in southeastern Hungary are being tested for suspected bird flu, an Agriculture Ministry official said on Monday.
The dead birds are being tested in Budapest and come from a large farm in the southeastern county of Csongrad where about 40 geese had fallen sick and some had died, Farming Ministry Secretary of State Fulop Benedek told national news agency MTI.
Veterinarians who saw the birds said the suspicion of bird flu was justified.
The above comments suggest H5N1 may have been detected in southern Hungary. Although H5N1 has been reported in the Ukraine this season, other countries in Europe have failed to detect or report bird flu for about 12 months. Last season many countries in Europe reported H5N1 in late January and throughout February. This season most of the reports have been out of Africa, in Egypt, Sudan, and Nigeria.
The recent outbreak in Egypt has resulted in the death of all five confirmed cases this season, and the two sequences from the Gharbiya cluster had the Tamiflu resistance marker, N294S. The failure to find wild type sequences for this position strongly suggests the polymorphism was in the H5N1 prior to the start of Tamiflu treatment. Moreover, N294S has also been identified in H5N1 in ducks in China. The acquisition of N294S appears likely. The HA sequences from these patients had a receptor binding site change, V223I, which was detected previously in H5N1 from geese in Shantou. The Gharbiya NA sequence also had a new change, M107I. This polymorphism was in the same Shantou geese that had the V223I change in HA. The presence of two newly acquired polymorphisms in two genes that match a common source strongly supports acquisition of these polymorphisms by recombination.
Such acquisitions are cause for concern. In addition to the N294S polymorphisms in ducks in H5N1 infected ducks in China, the common Tamiflu resistance marker, H274Y, has been detected in Qinghai isolates in Astrakhan (A/swan/Astrakhan/1/2005(H5N1) and A/swan/Astrakhan/Russia/Nov-2/2005(H5N1), raising the possibility of more Tamiflu resistance in the region linked to Qinghai H5N1 infections.
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