Disease investigators have not been able to determine how a person in Missouri with no known exposures to animals or poultry became infected with an H5 bird flu virus.
Influenza strains are referred to by a shorthand code, H5N1 for example, that describes which flavors of two particular surface proteins it carries. The H (sometimes HA), is hemagglutinin, a ...
“There are two main reasons for that.” To be able to cause an infection, a virus “has to be able to get into the cell, and for that it needs a receptor,” Cusack said. For influenza viruses, those ...