Abstract

Indonesia has endemic status of H5N1 and the largest number of human cases of H5N1. Sources of human infections include mostly intensive contact with H5N1 virus or the environment contaminated by this virus. This study shows that feaces from pet bird victims and chickens were sold in live bird market (LBM) suspected to be the source of infection for human H5N1 in Bali and Bekasi in 2011. This study focused on the virus’ genetic character that originated from these areas, especially HA1, M, NS1 and PB2 genes. The results show that Bali and Bekasi viruses have similar genetic characters with human H5N1 viruses in Indonesia. The viruses have multiple basic amino acids in hemagglutinin that showed highly pathogenic, specific motif amino acid in the Matrix protein and ESEV motif on NS1. The viruses have no mutations in PB2 gene. The findings support that most cases of human H5N1 infection are as a result of exposure of birds to H5N1 virus.

Key words: Genetic character, H5N1, birds, LBM, source.