18.12.2013

A 73-year-old woman in Jiangxi province in China has died from an H10N8 avian influenza infection. This is the first report of H10N8 strain in humans.
The woman, whose immune system was compromised, had an underlying illness and had visited a live-poultry market. She was admitted to a local hospital on Nov 30, was diagnosed as having severe pneumonia, and died Dec 6.
The H10N8 strain has been detected in live poultry market in Guangdong province, China (the Journal of Virology - June 2012), and water samples taken from Dongting Lake (Hunan province) in 2007 (Virology Journal, January 2011).
A report in Emerging Infectious Diseases (May 2012): two Australian abattoir workers tested positive for H10 after they processed chickens from a farm that had had an H10N7 outbreak in 2010. They had only minor symptoms. H10N7 was also detected in two Egyptian infants in 2004. Avian influenza H10N7 seems to have crossed the species barrier from poultry to people for the first time in Egypt. In April 2004, two infants (the father of one child was a poultry merchant) presenting with mild febrile respiratory symptoms had H10N7 influenza viruses isolated from respiratory samples (promedmail.org. Archive number: 20040524.1392).
An avian influenza virus of H10 subtype that is highly pathogenic for chickens but lacks multiple basic amino acids at the haemagglutinin cleavage site, was reported by Wood et al (1996) Av Path 25:799-806.

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Characterization of an H10N8 influenza virus isolated from Dongting lake wetland (Virology Journal 2011, 8:42).
Complete Genome Sequence of an H10N8 Avian Influenza Virus Isolated from a Live Bird Market in Southern China (J. Virol. 2012, 86(14):7716)