sars (Page 3)

Why did SARS only become an epidemic in China and in Toronto, the part of Canada where many Chinese emigrants live? Scientists have found a genetic susceptibility to SARS that explains this puzzle.

Maggie Fox writes that a variant in an immune system gene called human leukocyte antigen, or HLA, makes certain patients much more likely to develop the life-threatening symptoms of SARS. This gene variant is common in people of southern Chinese descent.

“After the outbreak of SARS coronavirus infection in the Guangdong Province of China, it was surprising to observe that the spreading of the disease was mostly confined among southern Asian populations (the Hong Kong people, Vietnamese, Singaporeans and Taiwanese),” researchers write.
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We haven’t licked SARS yet, despite the news that a recent SARS-like outbreak in a Canadian nursing home was not caused by the SARS virus. Anthropologist Richard V. Lee says, “There’s going to be another SARS sometime; there’s no doubt about it.”

Laboratory tests show the virus responsible for the respiratory illness that recently affected 150 people is not SARS. “We have clearly found large sequences of the virus that are not present in the SARS coronavirus,” says epidemiologist David Patrick. This new virus looks like SARS and acts like a milder version of the disease, but is not actually severe acute respiratory syndrome.
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SARS is back in Canada, after they thought they’d finally gotten rid of it. The good news is that it’s a milder version of the disease. Viruses mutate, which is why it’s hard to get rid of them for good. In this case, SARS seems to be mutating into a less deadly form.
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Gro Harlem Brundtland, head of the World Health Organization, says, “We have seen SARS stopped dead in its tracks,” and says China holds the key to whether it stays that way.

WHO’s David Heymann says, “China certainly is the key to this outbreak in many respects, particularly because China has been able to contain this outbreak.” China initially denied an epidemic was going on, and Brundtland praised them for their “change in opinion about what was necessary.” Dr. Paul Gully, director general of Canada’s health department, says that even though Canada acted quickly, Toronto couldn’t prevent a second group of SARS cases. He says, “It’s really apparent that the ember can continue to smolder and the disease recur.”
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