Wisconsin Lab leads Bird Flu Campaign

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Wisconsin Lab Leads Bird Flu Campaign By MARILYNN MARCHIONE,

Associated Press Writer, Mon May 22, 3:22 PM ET

An unconventional border patrol in the Midwest is watching for a

dangerous migrant that may be trying to enter the country thousands

of miles away.

On Wednesday, agents will start searching their first detainees —

wild birds from Alaska that may be harboring bird flu.

" The whole point is early detection, " said , one of the

U.S. Geological Survey scientists involved in the effort.

" When West Nile virus started, nobody knew what was going on, " and

the germ started killing people before scientists realized it had

been killing birds, he said. With bird flu, " we have the advantage

of being able to sit down and plan things out " to try to find it and

prevent an epidemic, said.

Tests will signal within a day whether the deadly H5N1 flu is

present.

No one knows whether the virus that has ravaged poultry in Asia and

spread to Africa and Europe will make its way to the United States,

or morph into a human super-flu. But controlling the disease in

birds is one way to help ensure that it doesn't, so scientists want

to know if migrating birds have brought it with them.

" We know the specific sites in Alaska where wild birds arrive from

Asia, " said Dr. Dierauf, director of the USGS's National

Wildlife Health Center.

" Almost to the day, we're aware of what birds are coming and from

where, " because birds in the Pacific flyway have " high fidelity " and

typically return to the very spot they left months before, she said.

Her center, a sprawling, woodsy compound fronted by 15 acres of

restored prairie on the edge of Wisconsin's state capital, will do

most of the nation's testing of wild birds. The center is 30 years

old, and many of its scientists have been there that long, with

experience in animal diseases as diverse as lead poisoning in eagles

and chronic wasting disease in deer.

This summer, they expect to analyze more than 11,000 swabs from

trapped, healthy birds plus about 4,000 dead birds, starting with

400 samples arriving Tuesday or Wednesday from 10 villages in the

Yukon delta region of western Alaska, where hunters recently shot

migrating ducks and geese for food. Also coming are samples taken

over the weekend from healthy migrating shorebirds in coastal marsh

areas near Anchorage.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Agriculture will be testing

droppings from tens of thousands of birds around the country.

At the Madison lab, each bird gets a numbered manila folder file

that is entered into a global positioning database being built to

help track movement of H5N1, if it shows up.

Virologist Hon Ip will test samples inside a secured, highly

automated Biosafety Level 3 lab, air-pressurized to prevent germs

from escaping.

A small robot extracts genetic material from a sample. Another robot

sets up the test, injecting bits of the sample into narrow, test-

tube-like wells. The machine goes through heating and cooling cycles

to make more copies of the genetic material, and a substance is

added to make it glow if H5N1 is present.

The process is so high-tech that even simple interpretation is not

trusted to mere mortals: A fiber-optic cable measures the strength

of the fluorescence and reports the amount of virus.

The analysis takes one day, but " the implications of that first

positive are so high, we would want to repeat that test " before

announcing that H5N1 had turned up in the United States, Ip said.

Scientists also will inject each sample into eggs containing 9- to

11-day-old chicken embryos and allow them to grow for about two

weeks before testing for the virus again.

In a separate, even more secured lab, " we're going to deliberately

infect wild birds with known quantities of virus, " Ip said.

That will tell them how easily the germ spreads from bird to bird

and whether particular species are most vulnerable, as crows were to

West Nile. These answers one day might help control the disease — in

birds and perhaps even in people.

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