Mapping Reported Modes of Transmission of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) to Humans: A Scoping Review
Nicole Billias, Victoria D’Alessandro, Dimitra V. Pouliopoulou, Jessica J. Wong, Erin Miller, Jessica P. Hopkins, Eleni C. Boutsikari, Lauren E. Cipriano, Tiago da Veiga Pereira, Jennie Johnstone, Saverio Stranges, J. Scott Weese, Joy C. MacDermid, Kieran L. Quinn, David N. Fisman, Pavlos Bobos · 2026
Read Mapping Reported Modes of Transmission of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza A (H5N1) to Humans: A Scoping Review by Nicole Billias, Victoria D’Alessandro, Dimitra V. Pouliopoulou, Jessica J. Wong, Erin Miller, Jessica P. Hopkins, Eleni C. Boutsikari, Lauren E. Cipriano, Tiago da Veiga Pereira, Jennie Johnstone, Saverio Stranges, J. Scott Weese, Joy C. MacDermid, Kieran L. Quinn, David N. Fisman, Pavlos Bobos (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13393788.txt.
Description
Nicole Billias leads a sixteen-author scoping review mapping every reported route by which highly pathogenic bird flu H5N1 reaches humans, together with the body doors it likely uses. Older summaries were outdated or thin on pathway detail, a gap that matters for pandemic readiness. Searches across six databases plus grey literature to late October 2025, with duplicate screening, yielded one hundred twenty sources.
Animal-to-human spread dominated the reports, overwhelmingly from poultry, with cattle appearing in a small share after the recent dairy outbreaks. Environment-to-human routes featured in about a quarter of sources and human-to-human spread in about a tenth. Pathways divided into direct and indirect contact, linked to plausible entry through mucous membranes, inhaled droplets, swallowing, or skin breaks. The authors stress plausibility is not proof, and call for work pinning down causal mechanisms and risk factors.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Nicole Billias, Victoria D’Alessandro, Dimitra V. Pouliopoulou, Jessica J. Wong, Erin Miller, Jessica P. Hopkins, Eleni C. Boutsikari, Lauren E. Cipriano, Tiago da Veiga Pereira, Jennie Johnstone, Saverio Stranges, J. Scott Weese, Joy C. MacDermid, Kieran L. Quinn, David N. Fisman, Pavlos Bobos |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 69916 |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |