-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email In late March, a worker on a commercial dairy farm in Texas developed a case of pink eye . He eventually tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza Type A H5N1, also known as bird flu . Scientists were shocked to find out that cattle, not birds, were the host — and that large amounts of H5N1 were found in the infected cattle.
So far this year, there have been four confirmed cases in humans following exposure to a dairy cow, with at least 143 dairy herds affected in a dozen states. For years, scientists have warned that bird flu could become another pandemic like COVID-19 (which hasn't exactly ended .) In other species, scientists have seen H5N1 decimate populations of seals and cats .
Now, a new study published in the journal Nature takes a deeper look at the virus infecting cows, shedding light on the risk it poses to the human population. In the study, scientists found that after being isolated from an infected cow, the H5N1 virus spread to the mammary glands of mice and some ferrets . “There's good news and bad news,” co-author of the study Keith Poulson, director of the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, told Salon.
The good news is that scientists have a model to infect laboratory animals and get them to shed the virus in their mammary glands. Specifically, in the study, scientists found that when the mice and ferrets were infected with the virus, it spread to the brain, intestines, kidney, heart and l.