AgroMicron Rapid Early Detection (RED)

H5N1 Avian Flu

Since late last year, avian flu has spread to ten Asian countries and killed around 50 million chickens either directly as a result of the disease or indirectly due to culls designed to halt the disease spread. If the epidemic worsens, an avian pandemic may occur, and countries with big poultry industries, such as Mexico and Brazil, could potentially be encumbered with culls of equal of even greater magnitude.

Infectious diseases can be spread internationally in a variety of ways, including by travelers, conveyances and goods, and by natural means such as migrating birds. For both economic and health reasons, it is important to be attentive to mitigating the negative impact of travel on public health in an era of rapid and frequent international air travel. For example, influenza pandemics (worldwide outbreaks of disease) have occurred in 1918, 1957 and 1968 and are associated with excessive mortality and social and economic disruption. As an indication of the potential seriousness of a pandemic, the 1918 influenza pandemic caused over 50 million deaths worldwide (1.5 million in the US) and circled the globe several times within 18 months even before commercial air travel.

With over 1.6 billion passengers traveling worldwide each year, there is increasing concern that potentially deadly pathogens such as H5N1 Avian Influenza can be transmitted around the world in a matter of hours. Moreover, there are also concerns that epidemics might be intentionally caused by terrorists and rapidly transported around the world by airline passengers. Rapid Early Detection of a biological attack is critical to greatly reduce the negative consequences of such event. There are two broad categories of early detection systems that AgroMicron focused its efforts on. 1) detect-to-treat systems that detect a biological agent in timescales of hours to a day, and 2) detect-to-protect systems that detect in timescales of a few minutes. While the detect-to-protect systems can prevent exposure, detect-to-treat systems identify an agent in time to provide post-exposure treatment, thus reducing morbidity and mortality.

The Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) is a technical collaboration of hundreds of existing institutions and networks (administered by WHO) that pool human and technical resources for the rapid identification, confirmation and response to outbreaks of international importance. AgroMicron has addressed the issue.

AgroMicron's new 'Flu Vue' H5N1 Rapid Early Detection Test Kit