Scroll To Top
Health

HIV may help
spread of bird flu

HIV may help
spread of bird flu

HIV-positive people may be less able to clear the deadly avian bird flu from their systems than their HIV-negative peers.

HIV-positive people may be less able to clear the deadly avian bird flu from their systems than their HIV-negative peers, allowing them to remain infectious longer and possibly even harboring the flu virus long enough so that it mutates to a more transmissible form, experts warned at a Council on Foreign Relations conference in New York City. BBC News reports that health officials expressed concern that when the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu makes its way to Eastern Africa--to which many birds carrying the flu virus are currently migrating--it will begin infecting the numerous HIV-positive people in the region and possibly lead to an explosion in flu cases and deaths.

AIDS experts say that the depressed immune systems of HIV-positive people will be less likely to fight off infection with the flu virus, allowing the virus to replicate in their bodies for weeks. That long time frame would give the flu virus ample time to mutate inside infected individuals, perhaps even change to a point where it is able to be spread through the air or through even casual contact with those infected. If that should occur, the stage would be set for a global bird flu epidemic. "We're all very worried about the prospect," Robert Webster of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., told BBC News. (Advocate.com)

Advocate Channel - The Pride StoreOut / Advocate Magazine - Fellow Travelers & Jamie Lee Curtis

From our Sponsors

Most Popular

Latest Stories

Outtraveler Staff