Prevalence Of Antibodies To Avian Influenza A Virus In Humans Sera In Khartoum State

Abstract

A serological survey was carriedout to estimate the magnitude and the prevalence of avian influenza (AI) antibodies in Khartoum state population. A total of 222 serum samples werecollected from individuals, without any apparent clinical signs of influenza or influenza like diseases, while attending the Sudanese Atomic Energy Commission laboratories in Khartoum and Omdurman. The collected sera were containing 179 female samples and 43 male samples. The collected sera were first tested by AGID test, the results showed that 76 samples out of 222 (34.2%) were positive for influenza A type. Screening of the positive sera by hemagglutination inhibition (HI) test for sub-typing antibodies, using H5N1 and H7N3 as antigens and pretreatment of sera to remove nonspecific inhibitors, revealed that 13 out of 76 were positive for H5 antibodiesand only 5 samples were positive against H7.From the positive samples to H5 there were 8 samples from Khartoum and 5 from Omdurman area,and the 5 positive sera to H7 contain 3 samples from Khartoum and the rest 2 were from Omdurman. But due to the inability of HI test todetect low titers of antibodies to avian influenza viruses (AIV) in human sera, these results may be under- estimated. The finding of this survey is that, there are circulating H5 and H7 viruses among Khartoum state environment, but without further investigation we can not prove are they H5N1 and H7N3 or not