newjerseynewsroom.com

BY GINA G. SCALA

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

A new strain of influenza killed 162 harbor seal pups found on the beaches of New Hampshire and Massachusetts last fall, a new scientific report reveals.

The team of scientists, in a paper published in the journal mBio Tuesday, said their research shows the virus evolved from the bird flu. Five of the seal pups died from exposure to a strain of flu known as H3N8, according to Fox News.com.

“Clearly, flu is very high in the list of risk factors for pandemic,” Dr. Ian Lipkin, John Snow Professor of Epidemiology at Columbia University and the director of the Center for Infection and Immunity, told FoxNews.com. “We lose 40,000 people [per year] to influenza in the U.S. alone. The next big [strain] could be a huge problem.”

Lipkin, who served as lead author of the report, said researchers weren’t looking for flu as the cause, but rather trying to solve what killed the New England seal pups. After getting over the initial shock of discovering the seal pups had pneumonia, scientists followed the path to H3N8; which resembles a bird flu infecting North American birds over the past decade. With its ability to affect mammals, there is concern it could jump to humans, Lipkin said.

“Viruses are basically intracellular parasites,” Lipkin said in the interview with FoxNews.com. “They need to find something that allows them to get into cells, find something they can subvert so they can reproduce. These receptors sit outside cells, and allow viruses to get into. There are two types of receptors – ones found in birds and ones found in mammals. This particular virus has the ability to attach to both mammalian receptors and bird receptors. It’s devious.”

Eddie Holmes, an expert on how the flu evolves, commended the team for identifying the new virus and linking it the seal pups so quickly.

“It’s a beautiful study,” Holmes told the New York Times, adding the new virus should be scrutinized for threat assessment. “The question mark is what it means for seals, and what it means for us.”

As this research is made public, experts at understanding flu evolution are meeting in New York to determine whether possible precarious flu research, on hold for months, should begin again, according Art Caplan, Ph.D. in a blog for NBC News Health.

“Some argue that before they begin there ought to be a lot more involvement of the public in granting permission for this work. I completely disagree,” Caplan wrote this morning. “There are plenty of oversight groups in place already that are charged with protecting public health and safety in the U.S. and worldwide.”

Still, Caplan believes stringent rules are needed before scientists go back into their labs. “They are needed to help protect the scientists, you, me and everyone else on this planet should the dangerous bugs they seek to create get in the wrong hands or places.”