More Dead Wild Birds in Kelbra Lake in Germany
Recombinomics Commentary
July 12, 2007
At artificial lake the Kelbra on Tuesday further 16 dead game birds
At the waters, which partly partly lies in Saxonia-Anhalt and in Thuringia, in the past days nearly 300 Vogelkadaver were discovered; above all black neck divers. For the predominant part the proof for the dangerous type of virus H5N1 is present. The national office for consumer protection last diagnosed the virus with 26 black neck divers, a Blessralle and a board duck.
The above translation provides additional support for endemic H5N1 in Europe. Kelbra lake is very small, but the number of dead birds pulled from the lake in the past several days is approaching 300. There are now five species that have been identified. As noted above, most of the dead birds are Black-necked grebes (Podiceps nigricollis). However, great crested grebe ((Posiceps cristatus), mute swan (Cygnus olor), coot (Fulica atra), and common pochard (Aythya ferina) deaths have also been noted. The number of dead birds pulled from the lake is approaching the number (343) of confirmedH5N1 positive wild birds in Germany last year.
Similarly, the number of confirmed dead birds in Nuremberg also continue to climb, and three species have been isolate there. Only the mute swans overlap, so the number of H5N1 confirmed species at the two location is seven.
The detection of H5N1 in multiple species over an extended time periods in June and July strongly suggests H5N1 infected wild birds are endemic to the region. The positive wild birds in France, along with a wild bird and poultry on four farms in the Czech Republic suggest H5N1 is widespread and significantly under-reported in Europe.
Many of these birds do not migrate over long distances and appear to represent resident outbreaks. H5N1 is known to infected dozens of wild birds, so infections in resident birds would be expected.
The lack of reporting in neighboring countries is likely linked to surveillance programs with poor sensitivities. These programs have not detected H5N1 in live wild birds and screening of dead birds is not comprehensive.
The infected birds offer a robust sequence database of H5N1 in Europe. The H5N1 from these birds act as donor sequences, which recombine with regional sequences to drive the evolution of H5N1.
The creation of a robust and transparent database would be useful for mapping these polymorphisms and predicting vaccine targets.
Media sources
Recombinomics' Presentations
Recombinomics Publications
Recombinomics' Paper at Nature Precedings