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Scientists detect signs of deadlier SARS virus HONG KONG - A more virulent form of SARS may be killing the young and healthy in one part of Hong Kong, a group of scientists said on Wednesday.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) mostly takes the lives of the elderly and those already sick, but since Saturday there have been more deaths reported among younger people in Hong Kong, which has been worst affected by the disease after mainland China.
The scientists from the University of Hong Kong offered no firm proof of the existence of a deadlier form of the SARS virus, and research teams in Canada and the United States have not reached similar conclusions.
Their findings are based on the condition of patients from the Amoy Gardens housing estate.
Microbiology professor Yuen Kwok-yung said the team believed the virus "has become slightly more virulent" in Amoy cases.
"Even medical staff infected by the Amoy Gardens victims are more severely ill. So it may have to do with the virus," he told reporters.
The scientists said a quarter of 1,232 people infected in Hong Kong were from Amoy Gardens. These victims were more ill than others, displayed slightly different symptoms and did not respond as well to a cocktail of drugs.
"These lead us to believe that maybe the virus itself has changed," said Yuen.
Twenty percent of Amoy victims needed intensive care, compared with only about 10 percent of other SARS patients in Hong Kong, he said.
SARS has killed 56 people in Hong Kong -- seven from Amoy Gardens. Most who died were old or already chronically sick.
Some of the younger people who died were admitted to hospital only at a later stage of the disease, and a high-profile case was a pregnant woman who died after doctors saved her baby by caesarian section.
Authorities are still trying to establish how the virus could have infected more than 320 residents in Amoy Gardens. Government officials have made a link to an infected kidney patient who visited his brother there.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has said some patients -- so-called "super-spreaders" -- pass the disease more easily.
"Perhaps some patients sneeze more, or have more virus in their nasal passages, or are infected with a more virulent strain... We wish we knew why," Julie Gerberding, director of the CDC, said on Tuesday.
Medical experts say sewage in Amoy Gardens may be to blame. Fecal particles carrying the virus have been found on kitchen sinks and toilet seats.
Sixty percent of Amoy victims also suffer from diarrhea, which causes dehydration and is an added complication for the sick, compared with only 20 percent of other Hong Kong SARS victims, said David Hui, a doctor caring for patients.
"The first victims were infected through the respiratory tract, so they have fever, headache and 20 percent had diarrhea. But the infections at Amoy's were oral-fecal, so they have diarrhea," Hui told Reuters.
Reuters/abs-cbnNEWS.com |