MedPageToday Raw milk from cows infected with the H5N1 bird flu has been shown to contain very high levels of the virus, making it quite risky for people to consume.
With FDA data showing some 4.4% of Americans drank raw milk at least once a year, and 1% drank it once a week or more, millions of Americans may be at risk of contracting the virus.
The question is, would an H5N1 infection from raw milk look like a typical influenza infection to most doctors, or would its symptoms be different? And would doctors be testing for influenza? On that first question, Andrew Pekosz, PhD, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, said it’s likely an H5N1 infection from raw milk “would be primarily a respiratory infection based on what happens to other animals that either ingest H5N1-containing milk, or what we see with predatory birds and other carnivores who get infected by eating an H5N1-infected bird.”
“In those animals, the infection is in the lungs, but also spreads to a lot of other organs, which is what leads to the death of the animal,” Pekosz told MedPage Today in an email.
Those animals include cats; in April, data published in the CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases showed that more than half of 24 domestic cats fed raw milk from sick cows on a dairy farm in north Texas in mid-March became sick and died.