H5N1 now better adapts to infect cattle, finds new study

Anew international study has found that the HsN1 avian flu virus is gradually becoming better adapted to infect cattle.

- SOHINI DAS

This development carries serious implications for countries such as India, which faces recurrent bird flu outbreaks and has one of the world’slargest poultry and livestock populations.

The research, published this weekin Nature Communications, examined how avian HSN1 viruses have evolved over six decades. It found that some of the more recent variants are significantly better at infecting cow cells and mammary tissues than olderstrains.

Led by scientists at the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, the study comes amid ongoing HS5N1 outbreaks in dairy cows inthe United States since March 2024. This episode initially surprised virologists, as influenza viruses were not previously thought to cause outbreaks in cattle.

The detection of HsN1 in US dairy herds has revealed a new and worrying pathway for the virus to spread and adapt in mammals.

Byanalysinga large panelofvirusesspanning over 60 years of evolution, researchers found that the ability of H5N1 to infect bovine cells is not driven byasingle mutation, butby multiplegen-etic changes acquired gradually over time.