- "What we see is the virus fine-tuning itself to
enhance its access to a new host, humans."
-
- WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) virus fine-tuned itself to become
more infectious as last year's epidemic spread across China, researchers
reported on Thursday.
-
- Early patients with SARS had a genetically form, very
similar to that seen in civets, while the last patients in the epidemic
had a slightly mutated form, the researchers said.
-
- "What we see is the virus fine-tuning itself to
enhance its access to a new host, humans," Chung-I Wu, a professor
and chairperson of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago,
said in a statement.
-
- "This is a disturbing process to watch, as the virus
improves itself under selective pressure, learning to spread from person
to person, then sticking with the version that is most effective."
-
- This may explain why the virus became more infectious
with time, Wu said.
-
- The finding, published in the journal Science, supports
the idea the virus leapt to people from animals and also should allow experts
to understand the virus better.
-
- SARS infected more than 8,000 people last year and killed
nearly 800. This year, two people have been confirmed to have been infected
with SARS and a third is considered a probable case, all in China.
-
- The virus that causes the disease, marked by severe pneumonia,
is a never-before-seen type of coronavirus. Coronaviruses cause the common
cold in people and a range of infections in animals.
-
- Wu, Guoping Zhao of the Chinese National Human Genome
Centre, and colleagues in China including at the Guangdong Centre for Disease
Control and Prevention studied the spike protein on the virus, known to
give the microbe its ability to infect.
-
- In the first people infected it was virtually identical
to viruses taken from civets, weasel-like animals valued for their meat
and sold in markets in southern China.
-
- As the virus spread more freely from person to person,
it mutated slightly, apparently adapting itself better to live in humans.
That was when the "super-spreading" occurred that made the virus
so frightening, including the case of a doctor who infected several people
at a Hong Kong hotel.
-
- The virus then gradually evolved into a more stable genetic
form toward the end of the outbreak, Wu's team reported.
-
- They said the study should help researchers find a vaccine
against SARS based on the spike protein.
-
- ©2004. All rights strictly reserved.
-
- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=
- 117&art_id=qw1075434843112B262&set_id=1
-
-
- Comment
- From Patricia Doyle, PhD
- dr_p_doyle@hotmail.com
- 1-31-4
-
- Hello, Jeff - If labs around the world keep playing with
SARS, it might just turn into a monster out of control.
-
- Now, I read that H5N1 bird flu is being researched all
over the world. virus stocks are being developed and sent the world over.
It will only take one researcher with the genetically modifed reverse genetics
version to take ill, go home and then watch it spread.
-
- I know, I must sound like I want to go back to the 12th
century at times and want to see all labs closed. You, of course, know
that is farthest from the truth. I think that there is far too much research
in modifying and altering dangerous pathogens. Researchers tend to get
a bit sloppy relying on vaccines to protect us. There is always a place
for research especially in the study of diseases like HCV where a cure
is sought. Cancer is another. However, bioweapons, well there is NO place
for that study. SARS, I believe, was being researched by China as a bioweapon.
Then we hear it broke out, first in the medical community then the population.
This, another indication that SARS was already in the lab.
-
- As the article shows, SARS is selective. It is almost
programmed, computerized. It knows how to protect itself, attach itself
and reproduce itself. It is what I call, a "smart pathogen."
HCV in many ways is a smart pathogen. It can identify medications that
attempt to destroy it and then mutate in such a ways as to make the medicatiion
attempt futile. This happens with some HCV strains and interferon. Some
strains are smarter then others, grins.
-
- SARS was thought to be mutating less virulent, however,
that was probably it in transition.
-
- One good thing is that they cannot use reverse genetics
for SARS vaccine, as the genome of the corona is far too large. In fact,
reverse genetics was being studied and it was under SARS funding and project
that the H5N1 influenza project for reverse genetics vaccine began.
-
- I still find it so enlightening that H1N5 bird flu vaccine
was in the works before we even heard about a pandemic. I think i sent
you both articles re reverse genetics for avian influenza vaccine, one
dated Jan 29th 2004 and one dated April 9, 2003. I even found information
going back to 2002.
-
- Almost like the ole adage, "which came first, the
chicken or the egg?" Which came firs? The vaccine or the pandemic?
-
- I am getting so many nice emails from people about Thursday's
show. I think that a lot of people feel as I do, tired of being lied to,
manipulated etc. We get media saturation such as the latest with bird
flu, but don't get the truth, that they had been working on it prior to
human infections and virus mutation.
-
- Patty
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