Penguins and seals suspects for flu

Press, 28 January 1986, Page 8

Penguins and seals suspects for flu

PA Wellington The role Antarctic birds and seals play in spreading influenza is being studied by three medical researchers at Scott Base. Dr Frank Austin and Dr Tony Robinson, of the Medical Research Council of New Zealand, and Dr Rob Webster, of St Jude Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee, are working on behalf of the World Health Organisation, which is interested in the relationship between human and animal influenza virus strains.

Dr Webster said pandemics (worldwide epidemics) occurred every 10 to 30 years. The worst know pandemic killed about 20 million people in 1918.

After the Hong Kong flu swept through the world in 1968 evidence had be-

gun to suggest that flu might be found in creatures other than humans, he said. The flu virus had then been identified in aquatic birds. In 1980 a third of the seals at Cape Cod harbour in the United States died of Influenza, Dr Webster said.

“We know the virus went from birds to seals and the evidence is that it is also transmitted to humans. Any humans that worked with those seals got an eye infection.”

The Antarctic research aimed to understand the extent of influenza viruses in penguins, skuas and seals, to find out if they had other strains of flu and to look at how they fitted into the worldwide picture of influenza in humans and domestic animals.

The three researchers would take samples from penguins, skuas and seals for analysis in New Zealand.

“We would like to try to isolate the virus from skuas and to be able to characterise it and determine whether it is related to the virus which causes disease in humans.” Dr Webster said. ;

The researchers spent a week on Cape Bird, about 80km north of Scott Base, ; taking samples from penguins and skuas, before returning to Scott Base to take seal samples. :

The seriousness of their interest in Influenza was demonstrated by Dr Webster’s example of the 1918 pandemic. “The potential for that' to occur still exists because these things are all still sitting out there in the aquatic population.”