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To: RealMuLan who wrote (30854)	4/5/2003 11:17:01 PM
From: RealMuLan	Respond to of 74559

WHO experts well-informed in study tour on SARS in S. China (April 06,2003 )(xinhua) "The data we've got during the three days of staying here is much more than we expected," said Dr. Robert F. Breiman, head of a five-member World Health Organization (WHO) expert team in Guangdong Province studying the situation of SARS. They were impressed with the work of the local government in Guangdong, south China, on the control of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), said Breiman at press conference here Saturday. The hospitals they visited have done a remarkable job and they follow the procedures and techniques that are used by Asian countries to control the virus, according to the WHO expert. The local government and hospitals have a job to protect medical staff and health workers, he said. "We encourage scientists and medical experts here to release their huge amount of research results not only to China but also to international journals. He hoped that local scientists and experts should pay special attention to the highly-infectious patients. Talking about the origin of the virus, Breiman said, "We probably won't know for a while what the origin of this virus is." "We can't really say without further information where this actually originated," he said, "It's really too early to tell where it came from." "It's always possible it came from somewhere else, it's possible it came from here, we'll just have to wait for more information to come in," the expert said. At this stage, their work is merely to collect data and analyze the data, Breiman said. "In fact, we don't know where is the origin of this virus," he added. Alan Schnur, another WHO expert, said that for personal health, the risk is pretty. "If we compare the number of patients with the populations of Guangzhou and Hong Kong, the percentage is pretty small," he said. "As to public health, the medical staff members and health workers are more likely to be infected by SARS. So we should take necessary and immediate measures to guarantee their safety." "There is risk, but it is pretty small. That's why we don't wear masks," he said. The WHO delegation will stay in Guangdong until April 8. www1.chinadaily.com.cn

To: RealMuLan who wrote (30854)	4/5/2003 11:33:35 PM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Tiwu Zhang, Chlamydia trachomatis is the specific bacterium that causes chlamydia. And I do remember reading something about Chinese doctors culturing a bacterium from the Chlamydia family. But I had thought that both European researchers and WHO (as well as CDC) had already identified the responsible agent as being a previously unknown variant of the coronavirus, one of the leading causes of the common cold. I think it was the European researchers that stated that any findings of chlamydia were secondary and coincidental to the coronavirus, as none of the patients in Europe or Canada had any evidence of chlamydia, or exposure to chlamydia. Chlamydia itself is not an uncommon social disease amongst promiscuous humans (or people who at one time in their lives were promiscuous) in the world, or even in people who are exposed to others in society where chlamydia is endemic in the local population, not necessitating sexual contact. In any case, I think it's unlikely that any bacterium is responsible for SARS, because bacterium, unlike viruses, are relatively easy to spot and identify. For one thing, bacterium are many times larger than most viruses, and are usually easy targets for culture mediums. I also think that (most) bacterium respond to one or more antibiotics rather quickly, so even if the disease weren't knocked down quickly by antibiotics, doctors would usually expect to see some sort of change in the course of the disease with the application of a wide range of antibiotics in large doses once treatment began. As SARS failed to respond to antibiotics in all patients, and antibiotics were only marginally helpful in combination with antivirals, I would suspect that the agent was a virus, not a bacterium. But what do I know??? <g> Good luck to you... KJC

To: RealMuLan who wrote (30854)	4/5/2003 11:59:21 PM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 74559

Yiwu Zhang, The article you linked to raises the possibility that more than one agent, acting in tandem with one another, is what causes the SARS disease. That raises the question of why the disease apparently is more severe in some folks than in others. One possible answer is age, and by extension, the quality of an individual's immune system. Older folks, infants to toddlers, and folks with other underlying diseases (like diabetes or chronic respiratory diseases) would be more likely to succumb to the effects of SARS. And indeed, the statistics show that among the dead, old age is one prominent feature in many of the cases. But that wouldn't explain the severity of the disease in some of the others who have died, or among those that recovered but suffered mightily while hospitalized. Only the coronavirus is (believed) common to all SARS sufferers. The presence of the Chlamydia bacterium is apparently only found in some Chinese patients, in particular those in and around Guangdong province. The paramyxovirus was found only in a few European patients. The rest, including all of Hong Kong, were strictly limited to the coronavirus, to the best of my knowledge. So, the results and patterns seem different, with the only common agent being the new coronavirus. At first blush, the disease seems to be a paradox, quite puzzling and challenging indeed. More research is needed. KJC