Domestic cats can spread avian influenza and new precautions should be taken to reduce this potential new source of the disease, scientists have warned.
Cats could play a much more important role in avian flu infection than thought, a research group from the Netherlands claims. Cats pick up the disease by eating infected birds and could pass it on to poultry, humans and other species.
The first report of a feline dying from the deadly H5N1 avian flu was reported in 2004, and since then many cases have been detected including the death of 147 captive tigers in Thailand who were fed H5N1-infected chicken carcasses, the research group writes this morning in the journal Nature.
The authors say that despite this evidence, the risk of cats spreading the disease has been overlooked by health organisations seeking to control the H5N1 virus.
"The available evidence, albeit incomplete, suggests that cats are more than collateral damage in avian flu's deadly global spread and may play a greater role in the epidemiology of the virus than previously thought."
The authors say as recently as last month the World Health Organisation wrote that there was no risk of felines spreading the disease. Yet there is ample evidence in Indonesia, Thailand and Iraq where there have been fatal infections among cats.
They also say that other carnivores, including dogs, foxes, weasels and seals, are vulnerable to avian flu infection after exposure to dead birds and poultry.
A cull of thousands of birds has begun in Germany after tests yesterday confirmed its first outbreak of the H5N1 bird flu virus in domestic fowl.
