http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/world/asia/22cnd-flu.html?ex=1151208000&en=85f5f8c2ce002514&ei=5087%0A
Now this is something new....
Bird Flu Passed From Son to Father, W.H.O. Says
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: June 23, 2006
An Indonesian man who died of H5N1 bird flu caught it from his 10-year-old son, the first laboratory-confirmed case of human-to-human transmission of the disease, according to a World Health Organization investigation of an unusual family cluster of bird-flu cases.
The investigators also found that the virus mutated slightly when the son had the disease, although not in any way that would allow it to pass more readily among people. Flu viruses like H5N1 mutate constantly, although most of the mutations are insignificant biologically; that appears to be have been the case in the Indonesian cluster.
"Yes, it is slightly altered, but in a way that viruses commonly mutate," said Dick Thompson, a spokesman for the World Health Organization n Geneva, describing the findings, which were not publicly released. "But that didn't make it more transmissible, or cause more severe disease."
The greater importance of the slightly modified virus is that it allowed researchers from the organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control to document for the first time that the virus almost certainly passed from the son directly to his father.
In previous cases where human-to-human transmission was suspected, scientists were not able to say for sure, either because test samples from the patients were not available or because the virus in the patients was the same as that found in poultry in the area.
Scientists say the H5N1 virus, which has killed hundreds of millions of birds worldwide, does not spread easily to humans or among them. But they have worried that it might, through normal biological processes, acquire the ability to do so, potentially setting off a devastating human pandemic.
More than 200 people have contracted bird flu around the world, almost all of them after very close contact with infected birds.
International health officials have been in Indonesia for much of the past month, investigating a family outbreak that affected seven relatives in a remote region of Sumatra. Six of the seven died.
Although Indonesia has been struggling all year to control a series of bird flu outbreaks in poultry, the family on Sumatra had no known direct contact with sick birds, although the first death in the family was a woman who sold vegetables in a market that also sold birds.
Scientists have suspected that H5N1, though an avian virus, could also spread from person to person in rare cases if there were prolonged close contact.
The family members in the cluster had a banquet in late April, when the vegetable merchant was already ill and coughing heavily. Some spent the night in the same small room with her. Some members also cared for their relatives when they were sick.
In hospitals, doctors and nurses generally wear masks when treating people who may have bird flu.
The first five family members to fall ill had identical strains of H5N1, one that is common in animals in Indonesia. But the virus mutated slightly in the sixth victim, the 10-year-old boy, and he apparently passed the mutated virus to his father. The presence of that mutation allowed the lab to confirm the route of transmission.
Still, Mr. Thompson said there was no evidence that the mutated virus is any better adapted to human infection than before. In fact, the World Health Organization has been following 54 neighbors and family members who lived near the family for a month, and none has contracted the virus.
The International Herald Tribune
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