Highly Pathogenic Bird Flu is Circulating in North America and May Impact Wild Birds

It turns out that the highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5 viruses may continue to circulate and evolve in North American wild birds. Scientists have taken a closer look at the virus of Eruasian origin and have discovered that it could be a huge problem in the future.

The term "highly pathogenic" refers to the ability of an avian influenza virus strain to produce disease in chickens. The population-level impact of these viruses on free-living wild bird species is currently unknown.

With that said, the researchers analyzed a mixed-origin HPAI H5N1 avian flu virus that was discovered in a green-winged teal in Washington State that was sampled at the end of 2014. This mixed origin virus contains genes from the Eurasian HPAI H5N8 and genes from North American low pathogenic avian influenza from wild birds.

"This report describes the first detection of HPAI H5N1 virus in North America, and this virus has since been detected in a backyard flock in British Columbia, Canada," said Hon Ip, one of the researchers, in a news release.

As with the H5N8 virus, no human infections with this H5N1 virus have been detected. However, similar viruses have infected people in other countries. The public health risk posed by these domestic HPAI outbreaks is considered low at this time, but it is possible that human infections with these viruses may occur.

"Such findings are not unexpected and might continue as the Eurasian lineage H5 circulates in the United States," said Mia Kim Torchetti, one of the researchers.

Currently, researchers are monitoring the circulating HPAI viruses. These could provide stakeholders with timely information for management purposes.

The findings are published in the journals Genome Announc. and Emerging Infectious Diseases.

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