More good news in the world... Mystery bug doctor dies

[Urban Ranger]

I heard it a couple of days ago on the news that two Kuwaitis and an Asian in Iraq were suspected of coming down with SARS. The Kuwaitis didn't go to any of the regions where the disease has been reported.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Interesting. Last month there were 5 cases of unexpected deaths of young children in Eastern Virginia. All presented with respiratory symptoms, then unexpectedly progreesed to respiratory failure. AFAIK the agent has't beemn reported yet.

My understanding about the Hong Kong cases is that the virus was identified as a new strain of Corona virus. Are you guys saying that the virus in Canada is different from the one in Hong Kong?

The Canadians have identified a metapneumovirus in 6 of 8 cases. The second link I gave (dated Mar 19) said that the Germans and Hong Kong Chinese also ID'ed a paramyxovirus (metapneumo is a paramyxovirus) in the SARS samples but other reports including WHO are talking about coronavirus in the Chinese samples. So the infectious agent of SARS remains unclear despite the WHO jumping on the coronavirus bandwagon.

I forgot about the specific cases in Virginia but here's some other food for thought. You're probably aware of the unusual numbers of severe (flu-like) respiratory infections this year in the south (at least). We had a bunch of schools close down here because so many students were out. My family is going through a dose of severe congestion, some fever, etc right now. It seems to be lasting much longer than the classic cold or flu timeline and doesnt have the expected fever peaks. My parotid on one side is swollen and although I had the mumps as a kid and my children have had MMR vaccine I have wondered whether this was a paramyxovirus of some type.

[Alexander's Horse]

This disease is a real worry - we're just going into winter here. If it gets into the childcare centres there'll be mayhem

[Urban Ranger]

Spencer,

I found this bit in a WHO daily press briefing:

Q. On the virus that is causing SARS, are you still thinking that it might be the combination of the corona virus and the PM virus?

A. Dr Klaus Stohr. We believe that the corona virus is the major causative agent. Now the data that is forthcoming from very many different laboratories which investigated samples from Viet Nam, from Hong Kong, from Singapore, from Germany, and from Canada, all these laboratories are consistently finding corona virus in those patients. At the same time, the laboratory in Hong Kong as well as CDC have isolated a virus from patients and they could characterize this virus as a corona virus and they could also develop certain tests, and they find that this test is positive in SARS patients and that the test is negative in other healthy adults. This testing now allows in the very near future to differentiate between those people who are affected and those who are not affected. This testing will start tomorrow in Hong Kong. Hong Kong University has developed two different tests: one test looks into the blood of infected patients and sees if there are any antibodies; the other test can detect virus in the respiratory tract, for instance in saliva. These two tests in combination will allow to detect SARS patients at an early stage. These are the very good preliminary results. We need to take into account that these tests have not been validated, but this starts tomorrow. The development of these tests is the result of a collaborative effort of all the laboratories that are members of this network. Two outstanding breakthroughs or detections were made by two laboratories and that is the Hong Kong University as well as the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA. All of them are working in our WHO network.

[Emphasis mine]

[SpencerH]

Interesting, I found the newer one from 04/01

Q. Are you sure that the cause of the disease is the coronavirus or are you still searching?

A. Dr Klaus Stohr: I think we are reasonably sure that the coronavirus is the primary causative agent for SARS. Now what’s the background, what’s the evidence? Scientists in Hong Kong as well as in the United States have investigated several hundreds of samples from blood donations, serum from blood donations, and they couldn’t find in any of this serum traces of coronaviruses. So antibodies were not present in all these controls. But they found in the majority of the SARS patients, they found these antibodies and they found the virus. So we are reasonably sure that the disease is caused by this coronavirus. What remains open, and we’ll see, and I think data will come out shortly, is what role might this metapneumovirus play in the severity of the disease? One hypothesis is that the co-infection, the metapneumovirus, is just part of it, but doesn’t play any role. The other hypothesis is that it might either aggravate the disease or be a type of helper virus. But, to answer your question again, we believe the coronavirus is the major causative agent.


What is unsaid is whether antibodies to the metapneumovirus have been detected and whether anyone has bothered to look yet. It looks like the presence of antibodies to a coronavirus (it doesnt say whether they detected antibodies to this specific virus) may be a good method for detecting SARS cases. Its a major leap of logic (at this time) to assume that the coronavirus causes the disease or more importantly the severity of the disease and to focus efforts on one virus and ignore the other. It looks to me that Stohr is keeping an open mind but scientists (like everyone) are effected by media pressure to solve this problem immediately.

For example Fauci said this morning on some TV program that according to the CDC the coronavirus caused SARS. I checked with the CDC, they are more cautious about it.