Some discouraging news from Occupational Health & Safety: H5N1 Avian Flu Strain Shown to Infect Bovine Calves. Excerpt:
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza can infect bovine calves, at least after high-titer intranasal inoculation, and conventional tests may underestimate such infections, a team of German researchers reported in the July issue of CDC's Emerging Infectious Diseases journal.
The team had experimentally inoculated a few calves with highly pathogenic H5N1 in a Biosafety Level 3 animal facility to test bird-to-calf transmission and also calf-to-calf transmission.
"Although the question whether calf-to-calf transmission of HPAIV (H5N1) occurs could not be definitely answered by our study, bird-to-calf transmission resulting in seroconversion is probable," they concluded. (Seroconversion is the development of antibodies in the blood in response to an infection.)
