Word: viruses
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...countries, including at least 50 suspected cases in the U.S. Dr. Carlo Urbani, the World Health Organization doctor who first identified the outbreak, died of the disease last week. There was hopeful news as travel curbs helped contain the illness and investigators announced they had identified a new virus, part of the coronavirus family (linked to the common cold), as the likely cause. But some of that progress could come unraveled, thanks to a decision by Hong Kong officials to go ahead with last weekend's annual rugby tournament and play host to teams from 24 countries...
...scientists race to unravel the mysteries of SARS, one issue high on their agenda will be the likelihood that the new virus is a cross-species transmission in which the virus has mutated from its animal carrier so that it can infect humans, who have no immunity from the alien invader. The most obvious examples of this are HIV and influenza, and the latter disease has disturbing parallels with SARS. The flu virus lives usually in the stomachs of waterfowl, and the two are co-adapted?the birds don't get sick. It is widely believed among virologists, however, that...
...populations of pigs and chickens. It's not known in which order, but with this ready pool of targets near at hand, flu has transferred from ducks to all three species?and once established, it can swap back and forth between its different new hosts with devastating effect. The virus survives and thrives by constantly mutating?so that just as our immune systems recognize and kill off one strain, a new one emerges against which our defenses don't work. Most are minor adaptations, the product of genetic "drift." Every now and then, however, something more dramatic occurs: a genetic...
...Hong Kong's "bird flu" was a virus that was part human, part avian. Much luck, hard scientific labor and prompt containment measures prevented that outbreak from turning into a global catastrophe. Next time we might not be so fortunate. Medical records dating back to the 18th century show waves of influenza rolling westward from Asia through Russia into Europe with disturbing regularity. Three or four times a century, a pandemic spreads from flu's heartland. So statistically speaking, since the last reassorted strain emerged in Hong Kong in 1968, we're due for another...
...Virus Spreads...