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Pastimes : SARS - what next?

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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (764)9/27/2003 10:47:02 AM
From: Henry Niman   of 1070
 
Avoiding SARS like the plague is not a bad idea. Although genetics can make a difference in some diseases, a quick look at those who died in Toronto shows that the SARS CoV is quite democratic. Proximity is the highest risk factor for being infected and age is one of the strongest predictors for fatal SARS. Of course none are absolute (although being in the hospital room of the Prince of Wales index patient may have generated an attack rate of 100% in that instance).

Most who died of SARS were Chinese because most of those exposed in Guangdong Province were Chinese. Genetics was pretty much trumped by the titer and genetics of the virus. The virus had fewer mutations in 2002 and early 2003, so there may have been a somewhat lower mortality rate initially (and there is evidence for the disease jumping to humans in the fall of 2001 and then the mortality rate was probably considerably lower).

The key genetic factor at this time lies primarily in the just under 30,000 nucleotides that make up the SARS CoV genome.
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