Bird Flu Symptoms

What are the Symptoms of Bird Flu?

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The incubation period of H5N1 Bird Flu virus varies from 2 to 10 days. That is, symptoms appear 2 to 10 days after the virus has first entered a body.

The incubation period of the swine flu is 3-4 days.

A person can be contagious without showing symptoms. An adult is still contagious until 7 days after fever stops and must remain isolated. Children 12 and under are still very contagious for 21 days from the beginning of illness. Keep the patient quarantined during this time.

Symptoms of Bird Flu and Swine Flu

People infected with Bird Flu or Swine Flu may have some or all of the following symptoms:

Mild cold, sore throat, cough and shortness of breath.
Fever greater than 38 degrees Celsius
Diarrhoea, vomiting and abdominal pain.
Mild to severe respiratory distress. needing ventilation within days.
In very severe cases large amounts of mucous accumulate in the lungs limiting breathing. Patients can ‘drown’ in their own mucous within 10 to 20 days. This may also involve secondary bacterial infection.
Laboratory tests have shown an early onset of lymphopenia, which is an abnormally low number of lymphocytes in the blood.
Complications also included renal failure and multi organ failure.
Other symptoms have also occurred through H5N1 bird flu infection leading to many incorrectly diagnosed patients including encephalitis, dengue, gastrointestinal disorders and cholera.
A very common symptom of the 1918 Spanish flu was the cytokine storm

Cytokine Storm

During the 1918 Spanish Flu a large number of deaths in very healthy young people (16 to 40 years) was attributed to a cytokine storm. This is when a very healthy immune system desperately over reacts to the invading virus. During other types of influenza the white blood cells produced by the immune system will release a variety of natural antivirals called cytokines that attack the invading viruses. The H5N1 Bird Flu virus is different to most other influenza viruses in that it is immune to at least two of these cytokines, named TNF-a and IL-6. The body’s immune system over reacts by increasing production of these two toxic and inflammatory cytokines until they begin damaging the body’s own tissues, the lung tissue in particular. The lung tissue expands and then collapses and the patient slowly suffocates to death in a few days. (Pubmed PMID 12195436)

In severe cases bleeding may occur. This is due to the inflammatory cytokines weakening and damaging the capillary walls allowing blood to leak out. Dark patches can appear under the skin. If too much blood is lost then the body may go into shock. It is important to prevent the patient from dehydrating as this could make the situation worse.

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