A strain of avian influenza virus that can be lethal to humans has spread from Southeast Asia to poultry flocks in Russia and Kazakhstan, a scientific journal reported Tuesday, leading a British researcher to warn that the virus may be approaching Europe.
"If we are seeing an expansion in range, that is something we should be concerned about," Ian Brown, head of avian virology at the United Kingdom Veterinary Laboratories Agency, told the journal Nature in an article published Tuesday on its Web site.
A Kazakh man who works on a chicken farm fell ill with symptoms of bird flu in recent days, Nature reported. The man lives in a village in the Pavlodar region of northeast Kazakhstan, near the Russian border.
An outbreak has killed 600 geese in the village, and Nature reported that tests showed the geese were infected with the virulent H5N1 strain of the bird-flu virus.
The virus has been discovered in three regions of Siberia, but so far no suspected human cases have been reported in Russia.
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