16 October 2006
Administrator – at 09:07
Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) — Bird flu may have infected an Indonesian woman’s brain before it killed her yesterday, marking the 150th fatality caused by the virus worldwide since late 2003.
The 67-year-old woman from Indonesia’s West Java province tested positive for the H5N1 strain of avian influenza on Oct. 11, four days after she was hospitalized in the city of Bandung with flu-like symptoms. Her condition deteriorated when she developed encephalitis, or an acute inflammation of the brain, said Hadi Yusuf, one of her doctors at Hasan Sadikin Hospital.
`Our concern is that the condition was caused by a bird flu infection in her brain,’‘ Yusuf said over the telephone today.
Neurological symptoms occur rarely with human H5N1 cases, according to virologist Menno de Jong, whose team observed 18 patients in Vietnam. Doctors are studying the virus to improve treatments for the disease, which threatens to mutate into a contagious form that could kill millions of people.
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