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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists said
on Thursday they had identified the virus behind
the deadly respiratory illness spreading worldwide
and proposed naming it after a doctor who first
identified the disease and later became a victim.
April 10, 2003
By Maggie Fox
The new coronavirus, a relative of one of the many
viruses that cause the common cold, is, as suspected,
new to humans, two research teams reported in the
New England Journal of Medicine.The finding means
that doctors can now concentrate on developing a simple
test for the virus that will tell them right away
whether a patient has Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome,
or SARS.The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
or CDC, has three such tests but says they are not
suitable for everyday use.
In one of the studies reported on Thursday, the CDC's
Dr. Larry Anderson and colleagues tested samples from
patients in six countries with SARS.
"Nineteen patients with SARS have been identified
as infected with the new coronavirus. All have direct
or indirect links to the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong
and Guangdong province, China," the researchers
said in their report released early by the journal.
"A coronavirus with identical (genetic) sequences
has also been detected in a patient with SARS in Canada."
They said the virus should be named after Dr. Carlo
Urbani, the World Health Organization doctor who died
of SARS last month after treating one of the first
patients infected with the virus in Vietnam.
"Because of the death of Dr. Carlo Urbani during
the investigation of the initial SARS epidemic, we
propose that the virus be named Urbani SARS-associated
coronavirus," they wrote.
SARS is marked by a high fever, dry cough and other
flu-like symptoms but it progresses to pneumonia.
Some patients must be put on respirators to help their
lungs function.
About four percent of patients with SARS die.
SARS, which was spread around the world by travelers,
has killed an estimated 110 people and infected more
than 3,000. But authorities in the United States and
other countries believe they have the infection under
control.
In China, Hong Kong and Singapore, areas hardest hit
by the virus, the picture is less clear.
The CDC, World Health Organization and doctors in
affected areas, eager to find the root of the mystery
disease, tested for the usual suspects, such as influenza
and other known bacterial and viral causes of pneumonia,
which turned out negative.
SUSPECT VIRUSES
At first a virus related to measles, mumps and some
other more exotic diseases emerged as the cause of
SARS, but scientists later ruled that out.
It is possible that the virus, called a paramyxovirus,
or other microbes may help make patients more ill
or make them more likely to transmit SARS, Anderson's
team said.
The lung damage seen in patients who died of SARS
looks more like the damage done by measles, respiratory
syncytial virus and some other diseases, and not like
the damage done by other coronaviruses, they said.
It is possible the damage is caused by the body's
immune response. When the immune system attacks a
bacterial or viral infection, it sometimes kills healthy
cells along with the microbes.
The CDC team is working to sequence the DNA of the
virus, which will give a better idea of what it is
and where it originates. But it does not look like
anything they have seen before in animals or people.
"Preliminary studies suggest that this virus
may never before have infected the U.S. population,"
they wrote.
No one they have tested who does not have SARS has
antibodies to the virus, suggesting it is new and
that no one has been exposed to it before.
"Certainly, it has not circulated widely in humans,"
they wrote. "Presumably, this virus originated
in animals and mutated or recombined in a fashion
that permitted it to infect, cause disease, and pass
from person to person."
In a second study Dr. Christian Drosten of the Bernhard
Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg and
colleagues across Germany, France and the Netherlands
also pointed to coronavirus.
They tested samples from 18 SARS patients in Hanoi
and 21 healthy people who had been in contact with
the patients.
All of the patients with severe SARS had the virus,
while none of the healthy people had it. Of those
with suspected SARS, the virus could be found in 23
percent.
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