June 22, 2005

Herbal drug may hold key against bird flu  

Laboratory tests have shown that a drug extracted from the medicinal herb, St John's Wort, could be used to treat bird flu in poultry. 

The hypercin drug was able to kill 99.99 percent of H5N1 and H9N2 virus in vitro within 10 minutes and field tests in Vietnam had also been satisfactory, according to Liang Jianping, a veterinary professor at the Lanzhou Institute of Animal and Veterinary Sciences.

Hypercin was administered to H5N1-infected ducks at a Hanoi poultry farm and the mortality rate reduced significantly thereafter. More than 70 percent of the 4,000 head duck population at the farm had been stricken with the deadly virus.

Meanwhile, despite bird flu devastations on neighbouring farms in the province of Ha Tay, no deaths were reported at another field test farm after about 3,000 chickens were given hypercin.

While the Vietnamese government could license hypercin for manufacture within two years, it may not help control outbreaks among migratory birds.