- BEIJING (PTI) -- Scientists
in China claimed to have discovered Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
antibodies that may one day help immunise people against the killer epidemic,
a report said here on Saturday.
-
- "Two kinds of antibodies were discovered in SARS
patients by a medical team working in south China's Guangdong province
where the disease first surfaced in November last year", China Daily
reported.
-
- The antibodies have been identified as IGG and IGM after
three months of hard work.
-
- "IGG is very much like a protective antibody and
every SARS patient has it when they recuperate," Li Gang, a medical
researcher with the No 3 hospital of Zhangshan University in Guangdong's
capital, Guangzhou said.
-
- Like the antibody against Hepatitis A, the protective
IGG is very likely to make SARS patients immune to the disease in future,
he said, while predicting that vaccines would be developed using the antibody
to immunise people against SARS.
-
- He also suggested that medical staff in close contact
with SARS patients can improve their immunity by injecting IGG abstracted
from the serum of recovering SARS patients.
-
- The medical team started its research on February 2,
testing the serum of 21 SARS patients. They could not find the antibody
in the blood serum of people who had been infected by SARS for a week or
less, the report said.
-
- But IGM was detected during the second week of infection
disappearing 90 days after the patients were infected with the virus. Similarly,
IGG appears two weeks after catching the disease, with all patients registering
the antibody after recovery.
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- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/cms.dll/xml/uncomp/articleshow?msid=46654498
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