WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 (Xinhuanet) -- The bird flu virus may spread to humans more easily than previously thought, but less deadly, suggests a study published Monday in an American monthly, Archives of Internal Medicine.

    The study in the Ha Tay province west of Hanoi in Vietnam involved about 45,500 randomly selected residents of rural areas reporting outbreaks of bird flu among poultry.

    "The results suggest that the symptoms most often are relatively mild and that close contact is needed for transmission to humans," said Dr. Anna Thorson of Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm and colleagues who conducted the study.

    The researchers said more than 80 percent of the study subjects lived in households that kept poultry and 25 percent lived in homes reporting sick or dead fowl. There were 8,149 reported flu-like cases with a fever and cough, with 650 to 750 cases blamed on direct contact with sick or dead birds, they said. And those having direct contact with dead or sick birds were 73 percent more likely to develop flu-like symptoms than those without direct contact.

    They also found most patients recovered about three days after the onset of the illness.

    The researchers noted that high death rates were reported among hospitalized bird flu patients in major cities. And no studies have been conducted in a population-based setting to reveal the true incidence and death rates.

    Meanwhile, they noted that without any blood-test evidence to prove that their study subjects had bird flu, the results are only suggestive and far from conclusive. Enditem