January 15, 2014– HEALTH – A report published by Alberta health officials over the weekend lays out the swift clinical course of the H5N1 influenza infection that killed a young Alberta woman on Jan 3, including brain inflammation and swelling, an unusual complication in human H5N1 cases. The woman, a nurse in White Deer, Alta., fell ill while returning from a 3-week trip to Beijing on Dec 27. How she was exposed to the virus remains unknown, since she had no contact with poultry during her trip, and no H5N1 outbreaks have been reported in Beijing recently. The case is the first human H5N1 illness reported in the Americas. Of 649 cases reported since 2003, 385 have been fatal, according to the World Health Organization. The case report was posted on ProMED-mail, the reporting service of the International Society for Infectious Diseases, on Jan 12. Kevin Fonseca, PhD, a…
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