H10N8中国发现新型禽流感病毒

A lethal new strain of bird flu has emerged in China. The H10N8 virus killed a 73-year-old woman in Nanchang City, according to a case report in the Lancet on Wednesday.

一种致命的新型禽流感病毒已在中国出现。《柳叶刀》(Lancet)周三发表的一篇病例报告称，H10N8禽流感病毒已导致南昌市一名73岁的妇女死亡。

Mingbin Liu from Nanchang City Centre for Disease Control and Prevention told the journal that the pandemic potential of this new strain should not be underestimated.

南昌市疾病预防控制中心的刘明斌告诉记者，不应低估这种新病毒引爆疫情的潜力。

“A second case of H10N8 was identified in Jiangxi Province on January 26,” he said. “This is of great concern because it reveals that the H10N8 virus has continued to circulate and may cause more human infections in future.”

“1月26日，江西省确诊了H10N8的第二个病例，”他表示。“这令人高度关注，因为它显示H10N8病毒仍在继续传播，可能在未来感染更多人。”

The two H10N8 infections both followed contact with live poultry, suggesting that the virus moved into its human victims directly from birds, although this has not been confirmed.

两个H10N8病例均发生在接触活禽之后，似乎表明病毒是从禽类直接进入受害者体内，尽管这一点尚未得到证实。

Western specialists said that, while the emergence of another flu variant capable of killing people was a concern, they were more worried by the H7N9 strain that emerged in China last spring.

西方专家表示，尽管出现又一种能够杀死人的禽流感病毒令人担忧，但他们更担心去年春天在中国出现的H7N9病毒。

The World Health Organisation is reporting five to 10 new cases daily of H7N9, although “so far there is no evidence of sustained human-to-human transmission,” it says. Sustained transmission between people could lead to a new flu pandemic.

世界卫生组织(WHO)目前每天报告5至10个H7N9新病例，尽管该组织表示，“迄今没有持续人传人的证据”。人与人之间持续传播可能导致一场新的流感疫情。

“It is not clear how serious H10N8 would be in a young healthy person,” said Wendy Barclay, professor of influenza virology at Imperial College London. “The [genetic] sequence details given in the paper are quite reassuring: there is no obvious clue that the virus is specially adapted to humans.”

“尚不清楚H10N8如果进入健康的年轻人体内会有多严重，”伦敦帝国学院(Imperial College London)流感病毒学教授温迪•巴克利(Wendy Barclay)表示。“文中给出的（遗传）序列细节相当令人宽慰：没有明显的线索表明，病毒已出现专门针对人类的变化。”

Jeremy Farrar, flu expert and director of the Wellcome Trust, pointed out that the world has become much better recently at surveillance and at sharing information on emerging infections. “It is highly unlikely this event would even have been noticed or reported just a few years ago,” he said.

流感专家、维康信托(Wellcome Trust)基金会主任杰里米•法勒(Jeremy Farrar)指出，近年世界在监测和分享关于新型感染的信息方面已有大幅改进。“就在几年前，这起事件也不太可能得到注意或报道，”他表示。

“But we do not understand what causes pathogens to cross into humans, cause disease and become transmissible,” Dr Farrar added. “As a result we cannot judge how worrying an individual event is and therefore have to worry about them all.”

“但我们不知道是什么原因导致病原体跨越物种界限，进入人体，引发疾病并变得具有传染性，”法勒医生补充说。“因此我们无法判断孤立事件有多么值得忧虑，因此对所有此类事件都应保持担心。”

Prof Barclay pointed out that the three avian influenza viruses that are currently a focus of attention – H5N1, H7N9 and H10N8 – “are not the only ones out there being picked up. An H6N1 virus infected a woman in Taiwan last year, and H9N2 viruses have occasionally also infected people in recent years,” she said.

巴克利教授指出，目前各方关注的三种禽流感病毒——H5N1、H7N9和H10N8——“不是仅有的感染人的禽流感病毒。去年台湾有一名妇女感染H6N1病毒，近年H9N2病毒偶尔也会感染人，”她表示。