In experiments, mice secure sick from raw milk carrying bird flu virus

Confirming the dangers of drinking raw cow’s milk when the H5N1 avian flu virus is circulating in U.S. dairy herds, researchers stumbled on that mice fed the milk fleet bought sick.

“Our records exhibit that HPAI A[H5N1] virus in untreated milk can infect inclined animals that bask in it,” concluded a crew led by virologist Yoshihiro Kawaoka, of the College of Wisconsin–Madison. His crew printed the findings Friday within the Unique England Journal of Treatment.

In leisurely March, researchers first detected traces of H5N1 bird flu in nasal swabs and milk got from U.S. dairy cows. Since then, the outbreak has been detected in various dairy herds across extra than one states.

To this level, H5N1 doesn’t appear to transmit with out problems between animals and humans: There were supreme two known human circumstances of H5N1 infection linked to the U.S. dairy cow outbreak. Each and every luxuriate in came about in dairy workers who luxuriate in had extended, end contact with the animals.

Consultants moreover mediate the customary milk supply to be rating, for the reason that heating enraged by pasteurization kills the virus.

Alternatively, drinking unpasteurized “raw” milk—a craze among a limited subset of patrons—might well, genuinely, scuttle the risk of passing H5N1 to varied mammals, including other americans.

To search out out if that’s upright, Kawaoka and his crew gave mice raw cow’s milk known to be depraved with the H5N1 virus. The rodents bought the milk by mouth.

The mice showed conventional indicators of infection, such as “ruffled fur and lethargy” as rapidly as in some unspecified time in the future after being fed the milk, the researchers reported.

“The general animals survived till day 4, when they were euthanized to make a decision virus titers [levels] in extra than one organs,” Kawaoka’s community talked about.

“We detected excessive virus titers within the respiratory organs [which suggests that infection may have occurred through the pharynx] and sensible virus titers in numerous varied organs, findings per the systemic infections steadily caused by HPAI H5 viruses in mammals,” the crew reported.

Excessive stages of virus were moreover stumbled on within the female mice’s mammary glands, even within the occasion that they were now not lactating, the researchers talked about.

In accordance with their findings, the researchers mediate that mammalian infection with the avian flu virus can happen after ingesting cow’s milk containing the pathogen if the milk has now not been heat-treated, as happens with pasteurization.

Individuals who drink raw milk might well mediate that refrigeration can kill off the H5N1 virus. The researchers investigated that thought, refrigerating the infected milk at a temperature of 39 degrees Fahrenheit.

Alternatively, stages of virus within the unpasteurized milk declined supreme slowly while kept at this temperature for five weeks, suggesting that the “virus might well therefore remain infectious for several weeks” beneath these conditions, per the researchers.

As for pasteurization, the scientists attach raw, infected milk through heating processes equivalent to those extinct within the pasteurization direction of. They relate that stages of virus were reduced to undetectable or barely detectable stages, however in some circumstances now not fully eradicated.

Kawaoka’s crew pressured that “the conditions extinct in our laboratory take into memoir are now not the same to the tremendous-scale industrial [pasteurization] remedy of raw milk.”

Restful, the study looks to substantiate that the explicit risk of passing H5N1 onto patrons lies within the consumption of raw milk.

“Construct now not drink raw milk—that is the message,” Kawaoka instructed the Unique York Times.

And there are extra reasons than bird flu to lead sure of raw milk.

In accordance with one 2022 take into memoir from the U.S. Centers for Illness Aid an eye fixed on and Prevention, raw milk consumption has been linked to 228 hospitalizations, three deaths and illness in extra than 2,600 other americans between 1998 and 2018.

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