Mary D. Nettleman, MD, MS, MACP is the Chair of the Department of Medicine at Michigan State University. She is a graduate of Vanderbilt Medical School, and completed her residency in Internal Medicine and a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at Indiana University.
Dr. Charles "Pat" Davis, MD, PhD, is a board certified Emergency Medicine doctor who currently practices as a consultant and staff member for hospitals. He has a PhD in Microbiology (UT at Austin), and the MD (Univ. Texas Medical Branch, Galveston). He is a Clinical Professor (retired) in the Division of Emergency Medicine, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, and has been the Chief of Emergency Medicine at UT Medical Branch and at UTHSCSA with over 250 publications.
Humans may get
bird flu from contact with infected birds (chickens, for example) or their
droppings or surfaces with infected droppings. Risk factors include caring for
sick birds, killing sick birds, and preparing sick birds for consumption.
Despite the large number of people who have contact with poultry every day in
the world, human cases of bird flu remain rare. This highlights how difficult it
is for the bird flu virus to infect human cells, but mutations like antigenic
shifts may reduce such difficulties.
Although direct contact with sick poultry poses the highest risk, indirect
exposure to bird feces is also a risk. Thus, contact with unwashed eggs from
sick birds or water contaminated by poultry feces poses a potential risk of
disease.
Human to human spread has occurred in isolated cases. Thus, caring for a
person infected with bird flu is also a risk factor for the disease. There is a
theoretical risk in laboratory workers who handle the avian flu virus. One
alleged incident in 2009 occurred when a company inadvertently sent live avian
flu virus samples to research laboratories, which subsequently were used to
vaccinate ferrets. The contaminated vaccine did not result in any human cases of
infection.
What are bird flu symptoms and signs?
Symptoms occur approximately two to eight
days after exposure, on average. Infected people experience typical flu-like
symptoms, including fever, cough, sore throat, and muscle aches. Some people also
have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, or eye infections. This can progress to
pneumonia and even respiratory failure. Bird flu causes a very aggressive form
of pneumonia (acute respiratory distress syndrome or ARDS) that is often fatal.
Most sore throats are caused by viruses or mechanical causes (such as mouth breathing) and can be treated successfully at home. However, a person should be seen by a health care professional if they have a sore throat that has a rapid onset, and is associated with a fever or tenderness of the front of the neck; a sore throat that causes the person to have difficulty swallowing (not just pain swallowing) or breathing; or if a sore throat lasts for more than a week.
Diarrhea is a change is the frequency and looseness of bowel movements. Cramping, abdominal pain, and the sensation of rectal urgency are all symptoms of diarrhea. Absorbents and anti-motility medications are used to treat diarrhea.
Chronic cough is a cough that does not go away and is generally a symptom of another disorder such as asthma, allergic rhinitis, sinus infection, cigarette smoking, GERD, postnasal drip, bronchitis, pneumonia, medications, and less frequently tumors or other lung disease. Treatment of chronic cough is dependant upon the cause.
Nausea is an uneasiness of the stomach that often precedes vomiting. Nausea and vomiting are not diseases, but they are symptoms of many conditions. The causes of vomiting differ according to age, and treatment depends upon the cause of nausea and vomiting.
Although a fever technically is any body temperature above the normal of 98.6 degrees F. (37 degrees C.), in practice a person is usually not considered to have a significant fever until the temperature is above 100.4 degrees F (38 degrees C.). Fever is part of the body's own disease-fighting arsenal: rising body temperatures apparently are capable of killing off many disease- producing organisms.
Influenza (flu) is a respiratory illness caused by a virus. Flu symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, headache, fatigue, and muscle aches. The flu may be prevented with an annual influenza vaccination.
Novel H1N1 influenza A virus infection (swine flu) is an infection that generally is transferred from an infected pig to a human, however there have been reported cases where infection has occured with no contact with infected pigs. Symptoms of swine flu are "flu-like" and include fever, cough, and sore throat. Treatment is generally with the antibiotics oseltamivir (Tamiflu) or zanamivir (Relenza).
Travelers should prepare for their trip by visiting their physician to get the proper vaccinations and obtain the necessary medication if they have a medical condition or chronic disease. Diseases that travelers may pick up from contaminated water or food, insect or animal bites, or from other people include malaria, meningococcal meningitis, yellow fever, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, polio, and cholera.
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