As the specter of a worldwide outbreak of avian or “bird flu” lingers, health officials recognize that new drugs are desperately needed since some strains of the virus already have developed resistance to the current roster of anti-flu remedies.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a potential new way to vaccinate against avian flu.

A new vaccine under development may provide protection against highly pathogenic bird flu and its evolving forms, according to researchers at Purdue University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who discovered the new preventative drug and have tested it in mice.

The H5N1 Avian Flu Virus has been found in a dead wild Canadian Goose in Abbotsbury Swannery in Dorset, England. This is the 11th case of the virus turning up in wild birds. The goose was found on February 25, 2008.

MIT researchers have uncovered a critical difference between flu viruses that infect birds and humans, a discovery that could help scientists monitor the evolution of avian flu strains and aid in the development of vaccines against a deadly flu pandemic.

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have found that 73% of avian flu outbreaks in the UK would not spread beyond the initial infected farm, but larger outbreaks are more likely to involve the duck meat industry.

Scientists from Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University have developed a three-dimensional, molecular map that could yield clues about the genetic mutations that will allow bird flu to spread among humans.

Smiths Detection, part of global technology business Smiths Group, today announces it is to launch a portable detection system that will enable veterinarians to carry out on-site diagnosis of animal diseases such as foot-and-mouth and avian flu. This new technology means vets will be able to diagnose diseases in livestock and birds in the field in less than 90 minutes rather than having to send samples for laboratory analysis.

The influenza A virus does not lie dormant during summer but migrates globally and mixes with other viral strains before returning to the Northern Hemisphere as a genetically different virus, according to biologists who say the finding settles a key debate on what the virus does during the summer off-season when it is not infecting people.

Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN), Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB) and Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have successfully developed a miniaturized device that can be used to detect the highly pathogenic avian flu (H5N1) virus.

In the first systematic, statistical analysis of its kind, infectious-disease-modeling experts at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center confirm that the avian influenza A (H5N1) virus in 2006 spread between a small number of people within a family in Indonesia.

The World Bank has approved a US$16 million credit for Bangladesh from the International Development Association (IDA), the Bank’s concessionary arm, to support the Government’s efforts to minimize the threat and risk of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI).