There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.
Abstract
In May, 1997, a 3-year-old boy in Hong Kong was admitted to the hospital and subsequently
died from influenza pneumonia, acute respiratory distress syndrome, Reye's syndrome,
multiorgan failure, and disseminated intravascular coagulation. An influenza A H5N1
virus was isolated from a tracheal aspirate of the boy. Preceding this incident, avian
influenza outbreaks of high mortality were reported from three chicken farms in Hong
Kong, and the virus involved was also found to be of the H5 subtype.
We carried out an antigenic and molecular comparison of the influenza A H5N1 virus
isolated from the boy with one of the viruses isolated from outbreaks of avian influenza
by haemagglutination-inhibition and neuraminidase-inhibition assays and nucleotide
sequence analysis.
Differences were observed in the antigenic reactivities of the viruses by the haemagglutination-inhibition
assay. However, nucleotide sequence analysis of all gene segments revealed that the
human virus A/Hong Kong/156/97 was genetically closely related to the avian A/chicken/Hong
Kong/258/97.
Although direct contact between the sick child and affected chickens has not been
established, our results suggest transmission of the virus from infected chickens
to the child without another intermediate mammalian host acting as a "mixing vessel".
This event illustrates the importance of intensive global influenza surveillance.