Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

I think people assume that a fever is caused by an infection but my understanding is that a fever is a response to the infection. The body raises its temperature deliberately to destroy a viral infection, even though it is unpleasant, as well as deploying the other defenses.

It seems, according to this article, that these bird 'flu infections are resistant to being cooked by a fever and that makes them more dangerous - we've lost a defense strategy.

goalieca• 8 months ago

Everyone pops a Tylenol/advil when they get a fever. Can’t be that bad.

chasil• 8 months ago

Kurzgesagt's fever video:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZOUcpiOxY

Edit: This video asserts that the heat shock protein excess is what reveals an infected cell to the immune system.

anonymouskimmer2• 8 months ago

Not a proper virologist, but H5N5 killed a person in Washington state recently.

There will likely be some cross protection on the H5 antigen, just as some regular flu shots provide cross protection against the N1 antigen of H5N1. (The H5 and N1 subtypes won't be completely matched, respectively, but you don't always need complete matching for some protection.)

avadodin• 8 months ago

The reasoning behind this is that birds have higher body temperature in our fever range.

They put mice infected with a flu virus modified to have the bird variant of a gene in an oven and the virus indeed didn't degrade as much compared to the unmodified control.

TacticalCoder• 8 months ago

Maybe it'd then be a good idea to have labs secretly funded by a joint venture half-US, half-Chinese, in China, doing gain-of-function research on these?

And then maybe that if some shit hits the fan, it'd then be a great idea to ask someone neck and tie deep in that funding and in that research to act as the "expert" to tell us if we should put masks on or not once it leaks?

aussieguy1234• 8 months ago

I'd imagine that in the event of a Bird Flu pandemic, a vaccine would be developed and dispatched quite quickly, unlike with COVID, where during the early days experts were saying it was possible we'd never get a vaccine.

more_corn• 8 months ago

But the current administration is antivax so…

aaomidi• 8 months ago

So was the one during COVID-19

binary1322• 8 months ago

Something I love to point out to Trump supporters is that he is the one who fast tracked the “clot shot”.

caconym_• 8 months ago

The US has antivaxxers in charge of health policy now, and they have specifically targeted mRNA vaccines with funding cuts. They seem likely to hinder rather than help any near future vaccines development program in response to a pandemic.

qcnguy2• 8 months ago

The reason they said it wasn't possible wasn't that making a vaccine was physically impossible. They said a vaccine might never arrive because vaccines have such a poor track record against respiratory viruses. The assumption the (cough) experts were making was that nobody would roll out a useless vaccine.

But they would! The COVID vaccine was advertised as 95% effective after two shots and done, and within months it was at negative effectiveness and people were being told to take infinity boosters. That's the exact scenario originally anticipated. The only mistake was assuming the regulators wouldn't sign off on a useless vaccine backed by dodgy trials. We were told to take our medicine anyway and then the vaccine boosters tried to gaslight everyone into thinking it was a great success even as millions of people saw friends and family who'd taken five shots come down with Omicron for the third time in six months.

It doesn't work because respiratory viruses mutate very quickly. They evolve around both natural immunity and vaccines very fast, but vaccination triggers population lock so the effect is worse than just letting people fight it off naturally where you get more natural variability in defenses.

That's why if you look carefully at the data for flu shots they don't work. They're reported as effective because the original specific virus goes away, but people still get flu and die at the same rate because "flu" is more than just one very specific virus. End effect on mortality is zero.

0dayz2• 8 months ago

Any source on these claims?

alentred• 8 months ago

If COVID demonstrated anything it is exactly the contrary, that we should not count on readily available vaccines, and rather should have *systemic* responses ready to be implemented when needed (including vaccine development, but not only). Every new virus is a new challenge and a vaccine may take time to develop. Meanwhile isolation protocols, masks etc. are all sensible actions. Prevention and prior investments into a wide range of measures, from education, to health protocols development and to vaccine technology research are all necessary to have these systemic responses ready in place.

binary1322• 8 months ago

Huh. I don’t know if I’m picking up what they’re putting down here, but it kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.

kruffalon2• 8 months ago

Well, yes?

Very simplified... It is a suppressor of symptoms like pain and fever which are the bodies way of letting you know something is damaged and killing off unknown foreign bodies respectively.

Suppressing symptoms does not remove the cause and is not a cure.

Dusseldorf• 8 months ago

I think what they're saying here is that you're not just suppressing a symptom, you're suppressing a sickness fighting mechanism.

throwaway2902• 8 months ago

I know someone who doesn't get fever. When he gets sick with regular cold or fly it's much longer and worse than for anyone else I know.

nradov• 8 months ago

Most people don't get a significant fever when infected with most common cold viruses.

Tor32• 8 months ago

You usually don't get a fever from a cold (except in Japanese anime), if there's a significant fever it's more likely to be a flu. Or, these days, could be Covid.

wombatpm• 8 months ago

Our pediatrician didn’t want us to give Tylenol unless the fever was over 99.5 and not to bring them in unless it was over 101 with Tylenol.

jeroenhd2• 8 months ago

Fever helps against all kinds of illnesses but it can also be deadly, so having fever reducting medicine around is a smart precaution IMO. If you're otherwise healthy and are dealing with a mild seasonal infection and have got something important going on, I can see why people would choose to reduce symptoms at the cost of taking longer to recover.

Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.

tayo42• 8 months ago

like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick.

Basically how I grew up. I took painkillers and throat lozenges in my backpack to school.

TeMPOraL7• 8 months ago

Lots of people go overboard with this, though, like taking flu reduction medicine with every single cold or using medication to go to work sick. American media seems especially accepting of people taking "flu medicine" over rest and recovery.

This is not specific to America; it's a thing in the entire Western world, and probably beyond. Because it's not like we have any other choice.

There is no slack in the system. Most people can't afford to have more than a few sick days in a year, and they prefer to save those up for when painkillers and cough medicine don't cut it anymore. Same with children, because a sick child staying home is usually equivalent to the parent taking a sick day themselves - either way, they're not at work.

We can talk about media or people going overboard once it becomes acceptable to skip work for a week because of sick kid, or in order to not get everyone in the office sick too.

lqet• 8 months ago

It may go further than that:

Fever is used by organisms as diverse as fish, amphibians, reptiles and mammals (see for reference Basu and Srivastava, 2003). Since fever is metabolically expensive, it must provide substantial advantage to the host. Surprisingly little is known about immunological effects mediated by fever, a lack of understanding that might be attributable in part to the common ignorance in clinical practice with respect to benefits fever might provide. Post-operative infections can be prolong survival: patients developing empyema after lung cancer surgery have improved 5-year survival (50% (n = 18) vs 22% (n = 411)) (Ruckdeschel et al, 1972). In this light, it seems unfortunate that fever is usually suppressed in hospital routine.
The phenomenon of spontaneous regression and remission from cancer has been observed by many physicians and was described in hundreds of publications. However, suggestive clues on cause or trigger are sparse and not substantiated by much experimental evidence. [...] At least in a larger fraction of cases a hefty feverish infection is linked with spontaneous regression in time and is investigated as putative trigger.
Professor Busch in 1868 introduced the infection of cancer patients by purpose as a novel strategy to treat cancer. He achieved a dramatic regression with his first patient using live Streptococcus pyogenes bacteria, the pathogen leading to erysipelas, published in the German Journal ‘Berliner Klinische Wochenschrift’ (Busch, 1868). Beginning in 1891, this strategy was exploited by Coley, who had some reading knowledge of German (Hall, 1998). Coley systematically applied Streptococcus pyogenes extracts – later called ‘Coley’s toxin’ – to cancer patients and achieved a remarkable rate of regressions. A retrospective compilation of cases considered inoperable at the time of treatment between 1891 and 1936, which was conducted by Wiemann and Starnes (1994, Table 2), determined a remission rate of 64% (108/170) and a 5-year survival rate of larger than 44%. Coley used to inject his extract once or twice a week over a period ranging from a few weeks to several months. His method became quite famous and was tested on hundreds of patients by him and contemporary physicians, but overshadowed by the development of X-ray treatment which was regarded to be much more powerful and of broader applicability.
Since cancer is usually a slowly progressing disease with occasionally long periods of dormancy, putative beneficial fever effects should also precipitate as preventive efficacy. This can indeed be found. In a cohort of 603 melanoma patients compared to 627 population controls, an inverse correlation was found between melanoma risk and number of recorded infections on the one hand and between melanoma risk and fever height on the other hand, leading to a combined reduction of melanoma risk of about 40% for people with a history of three or more infections with high fever above 38.51C (Koelmel et al, 1999). Mastrangelo et al (1998) report a striking inverse correlation between the number of infections and mortality from tumours in Italy in the period 1890 –1960: every 2% reduction in the number of infectious diseases was followed by a 2% increase in tumours about 10 years later.

https://www.nature.com/articles/6602386.pdf

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16444847/

bee_rider• 8 months ago

It is, as others have pointed out.

Although, we’re very unusual humans in the grand scheme of things. So using medication might be reasonable. The brain might start taking damage around 104F. That was probably a good tradeoff for a peasant farmer (our ancestors, on average). Most of us nowadays just think for a living, not such a good tradeoff for us. Take the fever suppressant, what’s the worst that’ll happen if you miss an extra day of work?

Amezarak2• 8 months ago

You do not get brain damage from fever.

https://www.seattlechildrens.org/conditions/a-z/fever---myth...

euroderf• 8 months ago

You want your immune system to simmer, not to boil.

beAbU• 8 months ago

It's a fairly common notion to "sweat out" a flu. Stay in bed, wrap yourself up in lots of blankets and just sweat the damn thing out. High body heat kills the virus.

So it would make sense that drugs like tylenol/paracetamol would make you feel better, but would keep the flu alive in you for longer.

adrian_b• 8 months ago

Anecdotally, I have used this technique many times, also drinking hot tea besides being wrapped in blankets, and at least for me it has worked much better than when taking any kind of antipyretics.

There are cases when the fever is dangerously high and antipyretics are necessary. But when the fever is supportable it certainly accelerates the healing.

01100011• 8 months ago

Copying Google AI's response here as it's at least as good as what I was going to recall:

Fever is a key part of the innate immune system, acting as a protective response to infection by raising the body's temperature. This increase in temperature inhibits the growth of many pathogens, enhances the activity of immune cells like leukocytes, and improves the effectiveness of the adaptive immune response.

My Vietnamese in-laws commonly make a sweat tent to shorten the duration of sickness. I can't say if it works, but it's something I intend to try next time I'm sick.

dabber21• 8 months ago

When I feel like I have a virus I usually put on my hoody which I only wear when I feel ill and a scarf and before going to bed I drink a lot of herb or ginger tea (like two cans)

this is will heat up your body and you get some night sweats, this usually helps reducing the sick time.

I can't say if it actually helps, but its become a ritual for that occasion

rkuska• 8 months ago

That's what we do here (Czech republic), we don't take meds until the fever goes over 39°C (above 40 you are looking for trouble). You lay in bed and drink enough to compensate for sweating. My grandma would make you onion tea.

tarsinge2• 8 months ago

Isn’t it common knowledge that adults heal quicker with higher fever, and that suppressing fever is needed only if it reaches dangerous levels (in contrast to children where fever can be dangerous at lower levels)?

Amezarak2• 8 months ago

This is common old wive's tale. Fever itself is not dangerous in adults or children.

https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/127/3/e20103...

There is no evidence that children with fever, as opposed to hyperthermia, are at increased risk of adverse outcomes such as brain damage.10,12,24–26 Fever is a common and normal physiologic response that results in an increase in the hypothalamic “set point” in response to endogenous and exogenous pyrogens.12,26 In contrast, hyperthermia is a rare and pathophysiologic response with failure of normal homeostasis (no change in the hypothalamic set point) that results in heat production that exceeds the capability to dissipate heat.12,26 Characteristics of hyperthermia include hot, dry skin and central nervous system dysfunction that results in delirium, convulsions, or coma.26 Hyperthermia should be addressed promptly, because at temperatures above 41°C to 42°C, adverse physiologic effects begin to occur.10,12,27 Studies of health care workers, including physicians, have revealed that most believe that the risk of heat-related adverse outcomes is increased with temperatures above 40°C (104°F), although this belief is not justified.7,26,28–30 A child with a temperature of 40°C (104°F) attributable to a simple febrile illness is quite different from a child with a temperature of 40°C (104°F) attributable to heat stroke.

You cannot get a dangerously high fever. You can get a dangerously high body temperature from heat stroke, or I suppose you could have some rare hypothalmic disease. But fever as an immune response is not dangerous to adults or children.

amypetrik8• 8 months ago

kind of sounds like suppressing fever e.g. with Tylenol would actually be bad for (normal) flu progression.

you're just the tip of the iceberg my friend - did you know "horse dewormer" ivermectin has long been given to humans - for decades - to treat parasitic infections?

nikolay5• 8 months ago

Well, most humans (unlike me) take Tylenol even with a "fever" of just 38°C/100.5°F, so what difference does it make?

cpncrunch• 8 months ago

Unlike us, the virus will replicate much more quickly in their bodies. It wont kill them, but will likely make the infection last longer.

Havent had a fever in many years, since taking flu and covid shots each year.

nikolay5• 8 months ago

Well, if you let your innate immune system do its job, fever can actually kill many pathogens and also ramp up your immune system response. It's fascinating that human cells can survive at slightly higher temperatures than most pathogens, giving us an advantage. It's not comfortable to have a high fever, and there's a slight chance of kids getting febrile seizures (although most are not actually that bad), but we do more harm ot ourselves for little comfort or a complete lack of soicism.

I get headaches sometimes. I know 200mg of ibuprofen can help me, but I chose not to. Pain is part of reality. If we mask it, we have little incentive to address the root cause.

I had COVID-19 in August this year. I had a 39.5°C fever for 2 days, then it subsided for 7-8 more days - I didn't take any antipyretic. You know, you can actually tolerate it if you accept it as something normal. And it's also a great experience to actually learn to know when you have a fever - you don't need a thermometer even.

pkulak• 8 months ago

Unlike you?

nikolay5• 8 months ago

I don't take any antipyretics, nor have I given to my kids, unless the fever is 39-39.5°C and climbing. Otherwise, you're sabotaging your own innate immune system!

ladyanita22• 8 months ago

He is not like the others

dosbod• 8 months ago

I wonder if Tryptase affects Avian flu as well. Anyone know?

I'd also argue my partner and I got Avian flu one Xmas from eating free range eggs when there was an Avian flu pandemic up the road from them in Norfolk and the British Govt ordered culls.

Tryptase:

"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5728160/

"Influenza A viruses are negative-stranded RNA viruses. Like many other enveloped viruses, they code for a surface glycoprotein that must be cleaved by cellular proteases for activation. HA, a major influenza surface glycoprotein, is translated as a single protein, HA0. For viral activation, HA0 (assembled as trimers) must be cleaved by a trypsin-like serine endoprotease at a specific site, normally coded for by a single basic amino acid (usually arginine) between the HA1 and HA2 domains of the protein. After cleavage, the two disulfide-bonded protein domains produce the mature form of the protein subunits as a prerequisite for the conformational change necessary for fusion and hence viral infectivity" [2]

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC33880/

I also wonder, by virtue of being a single strand of RNA, how long does it take for mutations to make the virus no longer viable in the environment it resides in?

In other words is a this a 3-4day process of replication and mutation which in effect kills itself off, rendering the need for immune system response and cough, cold, flu rememdies nothing more than containment effects?

je000653• 8 months ago

Tryptase:

"A striking finding was decreased tryptase content in mast cells with copper overload, whereas copper starvation increased tryptase content." [1]

Interesting copper-binding metalchaperone metal homeostasis project advertised at Durham. https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/how-do-copper-binding-...

'The wrong metal in the wrong enzyme is toxic.'

je000653• 8 months ago

[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC33880/

I also wonder, by virtue of being a single strand of RNA, how long does it take for mutations to make the virus no longer viable in the environment it resides in?

Jul 13, 2021 Possible impact on hospitalisations from different R rate scenarios #TheDailyTelegraph

je000653• 8 months ago

Mar 15, 2021 'Prof Harnden said annual Covid vaccinations could be necessary to keep on top of the virus in the years to come, much like the flu jab. "The virus mutates, [but it] probably doesn't mutate as much or as quickly the influenza virus, so it's very difficult to predict...' #Telegraph

Bird flu viruses are resistant to fever, making them a major threat to humans

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