Making a Ferret Sneeze for Hints to the Transmission of Bird Flu

Making a Ferret Sneeze for Hints to the Transmission of Bird Flu
New York Times
28 March 2006
Denise Grady
Photo courtesy of New York Times

One way to collect nasal secretions from a ferret is to anesthetize it, hold a petri dish under its snout and squirt a little salt water up its nose so that it will sneeze into the dish.

At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ferret sneezes are frozen in tiny vials and locked up in a high-security chamber called an enhanced biosafety Level 3 laboratory. It takes a fingerprint scan to get in, and an iris scan to open the freezer. Scientists wear scrub suits, gowns, double gloves and hoods, breathe filtered air and open vials only by reaching into a safety cabinet designed to keep germs from escaping into the air.

The vials are in this lab because the animals have been exposed to A(H5N1), the notorious avian flu virus that has swept across Asia, Europe and Africa, wiping out flocks of poultry and sometimes killing people as well. Researchers at the disease centers and in other labs are studying the transmission and virulence of bird flu in ferrets and mice, trying to answer questions that take on more urgency as the virus advances.

"We have never had a situation like the world is experiencing today, such an unprecedented spread among poultry," said Dr. Timothy Uyeki, an epidemiologist and influenza expert at the disease centers. "The geographic spread is unprecedented, and the mortality unprecedented as well, and this virus has been clearly confirmed to transmit directly from poultry to people and to cause severe and fatal illness."

Includes multimedia graphic depiciting the Anatomy of a Virus and Evolution of a Virus

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