Posted on 05/12/2003 3:02:34 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
AIDS offers a clue in SARS fight
Viruses seem to attack cells in the same fashion, expert says
By Thomas Crampton (IHT)
Monday, May 12, 2003
HONG KONG: The SARS virus appears to attack human cells in the same way that the AIDS virus does, which may give scientists clues about how to treat the respiratory disease, a leading AIDS researcher said Sunday.
Preliminary tests conducted in laboratory samples of the SARS virus successfully used synthetic peptides to stop it from entering human cells, said the researcher, David Ho, who pioneered the use of an AIDS drug cocktail employing similar tactics.
"The SARS virus probably uses the same mechanism as AIDS for pulling close to cell membranes," Ho said at a news conference in Hong Kong. "We now see we can make peptides that gum up the process, blocking the SARS virus entering into the cell."
While taking this process from test tubes to hospital treatment may take some time, Ho expressed optimism that research conducted by himself and others on AIDS would speed the process.
"We only got involved in looking at SARS three weeks ago, and we already have an inhibitor that works," said Ho, who is scientific director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York. "The lessons we learned from AIDS are certainly very relevant to the situation with SARS."
Ho's treatment, which aims to specifically attack the virus, contrasts with the current and unproven method that combines a general antiviral drug with steroids to prevent the body from damaging itself. Ho has made several trips to Hong Kong to help University of Hong Kong researchers seeking a SARS cure.
Dr. Yuen Kwok-yung, a Hong Kong scientist, who appeared Sunday with Ho, agreed with the steps the researcher was taking, saying, "This is the right direction."
News of the possible new treatment came as spread of the disease was reported to have worsened in Taiwan and the Philippines. This contrasted with China and Hong Kong, two of the places worst hit by the disease, where the number of new cases dropped.
Worldwide, the disease has infected at least 7,300 people and killed more than 530 patients in more than 25 countries.
Finland's first case of the disease was confirmed Sunday by national public health officials.
Taiwan announced four deaths from SARS and its sharpest one-day rise of new infections Saturday, and the World Health Organization issued a warning against nonessential travel to Taiwan. The warning, identical to those already imposed on Hong Kong, Beijing and other parts of China, was issued as the WHO, a UN agency, reclassified Taipei as an area of high risk for local infection.
With outbreaks spreading mainly within two hospitals, the WHO's Web site warned that cases had started appearing among people who had no known contact with infected patients, raising the possibility of so-called superspreaders of the disease in the community.
"Local probable cases occurred among persons who have not been previously identified as known contacts of probable SARS cases," the WHO said.
Acting to counter the spread of the disease, Taiwanese authorities Sunday imposed mandatory wearing of surgical masks for all subway passengers and announced plans to install video cameras to scrutinize 8,000 people quarantined in their homes after having been in contact with people who have the disease.
The Taipei city government said 1,000 soldiers trained for chemical warfare would disinfect the city's Wanhua and Chungcheng districts on Monday.
As Taiwan battled to control the infection, China and Hong Kong reported a slowdown in the appearance of new cases.
China announced five new deaths and 69 cases Sunday, the lowest single-day increase in infections since the country's top officials declared a policy of honest reporting. But the WHO says it is too early to declare that Beijing's SARS crisis is waning, because health authorities cannot explain how half of its more than 2,200 patients caught the virus, an omission that hinders efforts to fight its spread.
Beijing's Communist Party secretary, Liu Qi, warned against excess optimism. "We can't allow the slightest relaxation in the fight against SARS in May," the party's People's Daily newspaper quoted him as saying.
Hong Kong reported four new cases on Sunday, the smallest increase since mid-March and the eighth consecutive day in which fewer than 10 people became infected.
The improved situation moves Hong Kong closer to a lifting of the WHO travel warning, a move the agency said would take place when there were no more than five new cases for three consecutive days and fewer than 60 patients hospitalized for the disease. Of the 1,678 people in Hong Kong infected with SARS since the outbreak in March, 215 have died and 404 are still hospitalized.
The Philippines, which has reported 10 cases of the disease and two deaths, asked the WHO to re-evaluate its classification of "medium-level" risk in the country. It received the classification because the virus spread to at least three people from an original carrier. International Herald Tribune
Coverup? Is SARS Already Rampant In California?
5-11-3
Dear Editor: I am a health care worker working in a North Bay Area hospital. Since as early as March, on my documented patient rosters, we have been seeing a continual pattern of strange "atypical" pneumonia patients.
The pattern is as follows:
Sudden shortness of breath, fever documented in charts as 100.4 to 102.2, ARDS, pleural effusions, cardiac effusions, diarrhea for 3 days to 2 weeks, pneumonia all with a grainy or nodule pattern on X rays, respiratory failure leading more and more to death after ventilator support. At first the patients presented with a viral pneumonia presentation, then they went to a bacterial pneumonia presentation, then they went into kidney and liver failures, then unknown septicemia patterns, and mortality increasing. We started out with compromised patients with underlying disease, especially COPD or heart problems, cancer history or chronic fatigue syndrome history or HIV as early fatalities in March. There is a strong pattern of repeat pneumonia patients worsening and readmitted from hospitalizations in January.
Then younger and younger patients with less compromise started getting the same patterns. We had a patient in the teens and one in their in 20's. Other health care workers, working in a children's ICU close by, report the same patterns and that they have lost many children to this pattern. How many deaths? We have lost up to 20 people on one shift in one month who have died with this pattern. As staff members we don't know how many total have died or who is keeping track of our mortality rates. The state licensing agencies have been notified as well as public health by concerned staff members filing complaints that their patient mortality rate is increasing with the same patterns. Infection control and isolation procedures have been incredibly lax as well as proper equipment in working with isolation patients, such as proper N95 masks not available or shoe covers for many isolation R/O SARS. Many of the patients who died were not even in contact isolations.
Our staff has reported increasing, unexplained fatigue and diarrhea after working with these "atypical" pneumonia patients. Stewards attempting to get staff screened for symptoms or nasal swabs for viral infection have been ignored and disciplined attempted for questioning infection control policy or alerting staff to new infectious control SARS-LIKE patterns. We as several staff believe their is a cover up on an infectious disease with SARS-LIKE symptoms and that the staff members are being put at risk without proper inservice or protections to themselves. We don't know if this is ignorance, dysfunctional health care system problems, worries about corporate liability, or if we being used as experiments to see how this pattern spreads. None of us have agreed to be experiments or are being compensated as such. The hospital where this pattern has been a problem is in the Napa, Solono County, California. I am reporting this pattern in the interest of public safety without using or disclosing names of patients or staff or the specific hospital involved. We. as staff, are gagged from public disclosures of problems by corporate compliance papers that we have signed in the last six weeks that threaten a $10,000 fine, termination, or 6 months in jail for disclosing health care information. The policy is so tight that we can not even give a safe report to each other under their guidelines if we followed them strictly.
We do not believe, as staff , that this policy was designed or is functional for patient care, but was designed to protect the physicians and the hospital from mismanagement or liability issues without regard to public safety. Our hospital has continually refused to report it's suspect SARS patients to public health or accurately disclose it's numbers of SARS case under investigation, and do so only when forced to do so, by staff reporting to public health the numbers are not matching what they are seeing and working with. Many of our health we are concerned that a potential infectious disease contagious spread to the prison facilities would result in a horror of deaths to the prisoners. The California prison conditions are severely over crowded and have sanitation problems and many of the prisoners are already compromised with lowered immune systems now.
Respiratory Therapist
Comment
From Victor Fletcher
5-12-3
Dear Jeff -
This California fever at 100.4 is the same as previous reports of mild SARS fever at 100.5.
This is similar to what I told you about happening to hundreds of thousands of people in the Toronto area; what I called pre-SARS -- this thing takes many forms, some not so serious, others being fatal as we know.
We had hacking coughs for two months, sometimes dry coughs, sometimes not; mild fever, aches and pains that moved around the body; for myself -- I had what I called "glue in the brain" when I had to stop work at the keyboard and go and crash for what I thought would be a short nap -- but the nap would turn into hours of sleep.
-- Victor
Toronto Street News
In fairness, it is rense.com and it could be anyone posting this. Though, she does sound like a HCW. I would be interested in getting Judith Anne's take on it.
Another note, whatever this illness is (if this is, indeed, true) it appears to be hitting young children. At this point, everything proves that SARS does not effect young children too badly.
And finally, remember our very own Domestic Church nearly lost a daughter to atypical pnuemonia sometime late last year and the various deaths from pneumonia hitting youths from various spots around the country late winter.
By the way, just got back from that danger zone, and not wanting to be unsociable, I have succumbed to a really bad cough and cold. I'll let you know if I die.
On a totally different subject, I had a vacation brainwave: If the SARS virus lives happily in the acidic environment of diarrhea, then the China problem is probably being exacerbated by their penchant for using vinegar as a disinfectant.
I really dislike the bay area. It just feels diseased. Despite it's natural beauty.
Hope you feel better.
Thank you. That was very nice.
You are right, though. It really is difficult keeping small children's hands clean. I am starting to think you had something there when you said we should just stay home till they get older.
The combined population of the two counties is just a bit over a half million, so twenty "unexplained" deaths on one shift (plus deaths on other shifts?) in one hospital, in one month would be talked about throughout the area. This is particularly so with SARS in the news.
I suspect that those last two, seemingly appended, sentences say a great deal about who wrote this.
I've been reading that diarrhea is less acidic.
Vinegar is just weak acetic acid.
It's not a finding. Ho's simply trying to peddle his wares.
There are a higher percent of charlatan and self promoters in these high profile fields -- ie deadly viruses. Ho and Gallo et al are among them.
What I'm saying is pretty nasty and harsh. Few would put it this way publicly, but it is the case.
When I first staying home with my children, I used to go to rense's site because I thought it was entertaining (then sightings.com). There was always a boatload on anti Clinton stuff. I was really shocked when I found my way back there and saw the anti-Bush, anti-American borderline pscychotic stuff.
It seems he pretty much dislikes everyone. Liberal, conservative, democrat, republican, alien, reptilian-he doesn't discriminate. LOL
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.