Post by RonOhttps://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/spotlights/missouri-h5n1-serology-testing.html
6 of the 7 hospital contacts had their serum tested, but all were negative.
The patient and one family member that had shown similar symptoms tested
positive for 2 of the 3 H5N1 antibody tests indicating that they had
similar infections. The CDC is claiming that there is no evidence for
person to person transmission, and that both family members could have
been infected from the same source. This source is not known since they
had no contact with sick birds nor cattle.
So 2 people in Missouri were infected by the dairy influenza, but they
do not know the source of the infection. My guess is that they shared
the same bottle of milk, and that dairy products in Missouri need to be
tested in light of the recent CDC results indicating that the virus may
survive the most common method of pasteurization. Both family members
exhibited evidence of gut infection. The Asian H5N1 strain has been
known to cause diarrhea in human patients that had injested infected
goose blood.
Ron Okimoto
It should be noted that this trial had the Missouri patient as a
positive control, and the antibody testing can still be considered to be
a failure. Both the Missouri patient and their household contact were
only positive for one of the 3 antibody tests. This was using
antibodies made to a synthetic H5 gene with the two mutations found in
the Missouri patient.
It looks like previous serum testing as was done in Michigan are suspect
since they did not have the known positive dairy workers in the study as
positive controls, and all the dairy workers tested were negative. It
looks like the infected are not mounting an effective immune response to
the virus. I recall that Texas dairy worker antibody testing
researchers cited earlier testing of poultry workers exposed to the H5N1
avian influenza before it infected dairy cattle, and they found that the
poultry workers did not mount an effective immune response, and were
only positive for one of the antibody tests done on them. This sounds
like what the CDC is finding with the dairy virus.
The CDC updated their numbers yesterday, and did not include the second
Missouri case among their infected humans, and they still do not
acknowledge the two Texas dairy workers identified to have H5N1
antibodies indicating past infection.
https://www.cdc.gov/bird-flu/situation-summary/index.html
Ron Okimoto