Our study on pasteurising influenza viruses in milk is now out! It's a nice simple story: influenza viruses (including H5N1) are killed really effectively by pasteurisation, but in raw milk they stay infectious - obvious public health implications of both points... (1/2) rdcu.be/d73te - ThreadSky

socialinfluenza.bsky.social • 121 days ago

Our study on pasteurising influenza viruses in milk is now out! It's a nice simple story: influenza viruses (including H5N1) are killed really effectively by pasteurisation, but in raw milk they stay infectious - obvious public health implications of both points... (1/2)
https://rdcu.be/d73te

Comments

abbie4science.bsky.social•121 days ago

do bird eggs carry virus?

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

It's a good question. Fertilised eggs can be infected experimentally but in an unfertilised egg, which is made of non-living tissue, I wouldn't expect there to be cells for a virus to grow in. In principle an egg can passively carry viruses and bacteria. However...

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

... influenza viruses are sensitive to heat if you cook them (as noted in our paper!). In the UK, despite high levels of H5N1 in farms eggs are still assessed as safe for consumers.

abbie4science.bsky.social•121 days ago

good to know... although a good egg (to eat) shouldn't be overly heated (unless hard boiled)

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

True - but neither is pasteurised milk! I'm also not aware of any cases yet where someone is known to have been infected with influenza that way (which doesn't completely rule it out but is consistent with the risk currently being low)

viroepivet.bsky.social•121 days ago

📌

krischuns.bsky.social•121 days ago

Congrats!!

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

Thanks Tim!

weaver33.bsky.social•121 days ago

From the study, to be clear: "Heating to 72 °C (HTST method [most common in the US]) also consistently caused very rapid inactivation of the virus, ...but the times needed for virus titres to drop to the limit of detection were close to the minimum recommended inactivation time of 15 seconds."

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

Correct! But fortunately this seems to be more than sufficient: as we note in the published version, if it wasn't effective we would expect, given the prevalence of virus in pasteurised milk in the US over the last year, to have found out by now

weaver33.bsky.social•119 days ago

Still, no more dairy me....

looftsabine.bsky.social•121 days ago

"Reassuringly, this found pasteurisation to be fully effective"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-025-56406-8

williamreece.bsky.social•107 days ago

Not enough profitable death occurred under the first ‘term’

tommytwopence.bsky.social•121 days ago

This is great info, thanks.

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

... this was one of the first studies to look at pasteurisation when we preprinted it in June (https://tinyurl.com/3ceudpme) - hooray for preprints! Our published version now reviews the (many) other studies confirming this. Slightly dispiritingly, the story still feels timely... (2/3)

socialinfluenza.bsky.social•121 days ago

... many thanks to our many collaborators on this study, which had four co-first authors working across four separate research institutes - a collaboration faciliated and funded by the UK's FluTrailMAP(OneHealth) reserach consortium. (3/3)

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