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Sunday, May 17, 2009

Noses Too Cold For Avian Flu

The world is in the grip of the Mexican swine flu at the moment, with many worried whether a pandemic will arise. But three years ago it was Avian flu variant H5N1 that was making headlines. Although the Mexican variant is basically a modified version of the human H1N1, H5N1 is inherently bird related. According to the Imperial College London in an article by the BBC, human noses are actually too cold to harbour H5N1 which requires a temperature of 40C and as a result there is less risk of them spreading to humans. H1N1 is already a human flu virus and operates at human body temperature allowing it to spread more easily, but a mutation of H5N1 would be required first before it would successfully spread in humans. Such a mutation was the subject of a Horizon special a couple of years ago in which the effects of a pandemic in the modern world were presented.

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