Word: viruses
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Then came a break in the case. Scientists at the Fort Collins lab and at the University of California at Irvine, who had scrutinized human tissue, identified the real culprit. It wasn't the St. Louis virus but its West Nile cousin, or something very like it. That would account for the many patients with encephalitis symptoms who had nonetheless tested negative for the St. Louis virus. But it presented a broader mystery. Usually found in Africa, but also responsible for epidemics in the Middle East, Europe and Asia, the West Nile virus had never before been identified...
Thomas Monath, an expert on mosquito-borne diseases, says it could have been carried by someone recently arrived from southern Russia, currently the site of a large West Nile outbreak. If mosquitoes had gorged on his blood, they could have transmitted the virus to birds by biting them in turn--thus starting an infectious cycle deadly for some humans and birds, though never for the carrier Culex pipiens. It's a scenario, says Monath, that's become increasingly common in a jet-setting...
...National Center for Infectious Diseases believes the epidemic has now peaked. "With the cold weather and the control efforts," says director James Hughes, "I expect transmission to cease." But questions remain. Will migrating birds carry the virus south, and will it re-emerge next spring? Most intriguing, why does its overseas counterpart not kill birds...
...sign up for experimental gene therapy. Though the Tucson, Ariz., teen was born with a rare genetic disorder that partly disabled his liver, his course of drugs and diet was working. The Phase I trial at the University of Pennsylvania, where doctors would pump a modified cold virus into his system to correct genetic flaws, promised nothing in the way of a cure...
Gene therapy is a promising but unproved field of medicine, currently undergoing some 230 clinical trials. Since viruses are so good at hacking into the human body, scientists figure they can be used as packaging material for whatever gene the patient lacks. In Jesse's study, all 18 participants had the same disease: ornithine transcarbamoylase (OTC) deficiency, which slows the liver's ability to metabolize nitrogen and releases deadly ammonia into the bloodstream. So Wilson's team harnessed the adenovirus (a cause of the common cold), neutralized harmful elements and used the virus to send in normal copies...