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CORVALLIS, Ore. - An Oregon State University researcher has been awarded a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant to develop a test to quickly detect avian influenza in flocks of chickens and other birds.

Rapid, accurate diagnosis is crucial in preventing widespread outbreaks of disease in birds, as well as possible transmission to humans, said Manoj Pastey, an assistant professor of biomedical sciences in OSU's College of Veterinary Medicine.

"Diagnostic tests currently available for identifying infected flocks suffer from a series of disadvantages such as high costs, long processing times and low sensitivity," Pastey said. These disadvantages often lead to a delay of a week or more for confirmation, he added.

Pastey's research focuses on producing reliable results within hours of testing.

Avian influenza can cause severe economic losses to poultry growers, but with the growing specter of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu spreading from birds to people and starting a worldwide pandemic, scientists have renewed efforts to prevent and control spread of avian flu viruses.

Pastey's $100,000 grant from the USDA's Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service funds two years of study.

"Our objectives are to develop monoclonal antibodies against avian influenza viruses and use these to develop highly specific and sensitive immunodiagnostic assays for the rapid detection of avian influenza virus strains and anti-avian influenza antibodies," Pastey said.

Most virus strains typically cause few, if any clinical signs in infected birds, the OSU scientist pointed out, complicating bird farmers' efforts to detect disease within their flocks. And relatively mild strains are capable of mutating into highly virulent strains of the disease.

Despite isolated outbreaks, transmission of the H5N1 avian influenza virus to humans is rare, Pastey said. Bird-to-human transmission can occur when particles from contaminated feces are inhaled. Human-to-human transmission of the strain is possible, but there are only a few cases where human-to-human transmission is thought to have occurred. The H5N1 strain has killed 88 people since 2003.

The H5N1 strain creates a hyper-response of the body's immune system that can be more damaging than the virus replication, Pastey said. In the 1918 influenza pandemic, most deaths were among young people with strong immune systems who died from immune response overkill.

H5N1 causes the same reaction, Pastey said.

While physicians can tone down a person's immune response, risk that the virus itself will kill the patient increases dramatically, he said.