Seattle and Pullman may seem far from the front lines in the battle against the emerging virus known as H7N9 in China.
But scientists in both Northwest cities are watching carefully and working hard to help in whatever global effort is mounted against this new virus, which has passed from birds to humans. At the time of this post, about 131 people had been infected – and those were confirmed by lab reports. Thirty-nine had died.
Below is a partial list of some of the Washington scientists and labs who have a connection to the global work. Some of them are following with interest because they work on flu viruses or vaccines, and others because they work in surveillance of animals. Birds are a reservoir for many flu viruses.
In following this story, with so many daily twists and turns, it is great to have a “how-to” guide, and Maryn McKenna created just that for Wired magazine. McKenna wrote the book, “Superbug” and has great advice. On May 9th, one of the nation’s leading epidemiologists, Michael Osterholm, argued in an opinion piece in the New York Times that we should pay very close attention to this latest flu virus, as well as an emerging virus in the Middle East – known as a coronavirus.
“Some seem to think that public health officials pull a microbe “crisis du jour” out of their proverbial test tube when financing for infectious disease research and control programs appears to be drying up. They dismiss warnings about the latest bugs as “crying wolf.” This misimpression could be deadly,” he wrote.
Here are some of our Northwest virus investigators:
Katze Laboratory – University of Washington
http://viromics.washington.edu/
Paul Allen School for Global and Animal Health – Washington State University
http://globalhealth.wsu.edu/research/index.html
PATH – Seattle nonprofit, Scientist Kathy Neuzil
http://www.path.org/blog/author/blogger20/
Infectious Disease Research Insitute (IDRI)
Working on vaccine against H5N1, but following H7N9 closely
http://www.idri.org/press-04-17-13.php
Seattle Biomed, Alan Diercks and others
Collaborating with St. Jude’s Research Hospital in Memphis, studying
human immune response to H7N9
http://www.seattlebiomed.org/disease-focus