Inside the Race to Track and Stop the Spread of Avian Flu
In a paper published last month, Janies, a distinguished professor of bioinformatics and genomics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, found that current avian flu strains are evolving to escape mammalian immune responses. “These results indicate that the virus has potential to move from epidemic to pandemic status,” the researchers said.
Antibodies, which are immune proteins that fight infection, now have decreased binding ability for the more recent viral strains, which means a worrying possibility of spread among humans, according to the findings.