Tag Archives: Virus
2 Health Care Workers Made Ill by SARS-Like Virus
WebMD News from HealthDay
An emerging, SARS-like virus that has sickened 40 people in the Middle East and Europe since September has now caused illness in two health care workers who were caring for infected patients, health officials report.
Two health care staffers caring for a patient in Saudi Arabia have been sickened with the coronavirus, the first such recorded case of transmission from patient to health care worker, the Associated Press reported. Person-to-person transmission has been suspected before, the news agency said.
Coronaviruses include SARS, the infection that caused a widespread global outbreak in 2003. The new coronavirus appears to have a high fatality rate, with 20 deaths recorded among the 40 known cases.
Could Herpes Virus Affect Memory in Older Adults?
Chronic infection with cold sores may affect thinking, especially in sedentary folks, study suggests
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Amy Norton
HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, March 25 (HealthDay News) — Older adults who harbor certain infections, such as the herpes cold sore virus, may have poorer thinking and memory abilities than their peers, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that of more than 1,600 older adults, those with signs of chronic infection with herpes simplex and certain other viruses and bacteria scored lower on standard tests of mental skills.
But the findings, published in the March 26 issue of Neurology, do not prove the infections are to blame.
“They could just be bystanders,” said lead researcher Dr. Mira Katan, a neurologist with Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.
“We can’t make any definite conclusions about causality,” Katan said. “At this stage, you can just say there’s an association.”
Still, it’s an “interesting” association that needs further study, she said.
Many people carry herpes simplex virus, or HSV. One form, HSV-1, usually causes cold sores around the mouth, while HSV-2 is the main cause of genital herpes. Once a person is infected with either form of HSV, the virus remains dormant in the body’s nerve cells and can be reactivated repeatedly.
HSV can also move to any part of the body, including the brain, and for several decades, some researchers have speculated that chronic HSV infection might contribute to dementia — possibly by causing persistent inflammation.
In the new study, Katan’s team used blood samples from 1,625 older adults — average age 69 — to look for indicators of chronic infection with a few common pathogens: HSV and another virus in the herpes family called cytomegalovirus, which usually causes no symptoms; C. pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes respiratory infections; and H. pylori, a stomach-dwelling bacterium that can cause ulcers.
On average, the greater their “infection burden,” the worse the older adults performed on a standard test of thinking and memory, the study found.
That was true even when the researchers weighed other factors that affect older adults’ mental sharpness, including education, smoking, heart disease and diabetes.
But the study hinted that exercise might play a protective role. The research team found that infection “burden” was related to mental impairment only among sedentary people — and not those who said they got some exercise.
However, that too needs to be studied further, the team noted.
Katan said that infection with the viruses, rather than the two bacteria, seemed to play a greater role in mental decline. Overall, 23 percent of the study participants had signs of mental impairment at the study’s start; the odds of impairment were 2.5 times higher among people who carried all three viruses — HSV 1 and 2, and cytomegalovirus — than for people who carried only one virus.
Homegrown Strain of Dengue Fever Virus Pinpointed in Florida
Some 2009-2010 cases originated in Key West mosquitoes, not from travelers, CDC says
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, March 14 (HealthDay News) — Some people who fell prey to a 2009-2010 outbreak of dengue fever in Florida carried a particular viral strain that they did not bring into the country from a recent trip abroad, according to a fresh genetic analysis conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To date, most cases of dengue fever on American soil have typically involved travelers who “import” the painful mosquito-borne disease after having been bitten elsewhere. But though the disease cannot move from person to person, mosquitoes are able to pick up dengue from infected patients and, in turn, spread the disease among a local populace.
The CDC’s viral fingerprinting of Key West, Fla., dengue patients therefore raises the specter that a disease more commonly found in parts of Africa, the Caribbean, South America and Asia might be gaining traction among North American mosquito populations.
“Florida has the mosquitoes that transmit dengue and the climate to sustain these mosquitoes all year around,” cautioned study lead author Jorge Munoz-Jordan. “So, there is potential for the dengue virus to be transmitted locally, and cause dengue outbreaks like the ones we saw in Key West in 2009 and 2010,” he said.
“Every year more countries add another one of the dengue virus subtypes to their lists of locally transmitted viruses, and this could be the case with Florida,” said Munoz-Jordan, chief of CDC’s molecular diagnostics activity in the dengue branch of the division of vector-borne disease.
He and his colleagues report their findings in the April issue of CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases.
Dengue fever is the most widespread mosquito-borne viral disease in the world, now found in roughly 100 countries, the study authors noted.
That said, until the 2009-2010 southern Florida outbreak, the United States had remained basically dengue-free for more than half a century.
Ultimately, 93 patients in the Key West area alone were diagnosed with the disease during the outbreak, which seemingly ended in 2010, with no new cases reported in 2011.
But the lack of later cases does not give experts much comfort. The reason: 75 percent of infected patients show no symptoms, and the large “house mosquito” population in the region remains a disease-transmitting disaster waiting to happen.
To try and get a handle on just how serious that risk might be, the CDC team looked at blood samples from 16 of Florida’s 67 counties, collected from dengue patients by the Florida Department of Health.
Rigorous genetic testing revealed what researchers feared: the identification of a local Key West strain among dengue patients who had not recently traveled outside the United States.
The team was able to trace the new Key West strain back to its original imported source: a Central American viral strain initially brought into Florida by patients infected in that region. But they stressed that as the local mosquito population acquired the virus from this first round of patients, it developed into a distinct strain of its own. In turn, the new strain was passed on to local residents who had not recently visited Central America.
Secrets of New SARS-Like Virus Uncovered
Finding shows how it enters cells, could lead to vaccine, researchers report
WebMD News from HealthDay
By Barbara Bronson Gray
HealthDay Reporter
WEDNESDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) — A discovery that shows how a novel — and often fatal — virus infects cells may help fight a health threat that has recently emerged on the world stage, researchers report.
A unique coronavirus was identified as the cause of severe respiratory illness in 14 people from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom between April 2012 and February 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eight people have died after contracting the virus.
Coronaviruses — named for their crown-like projections visible under a microscope — are causes of the common cold but also are associated with more severe illness, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed hundreds of people worldwide in 2003.
Although no deaths have been reported in the United States, the fact that there were clusters of people infected in the United Kingdom shows the new virus can be transmitted between humans, according to the CDC.
Now there’s a possible clue on how to stop the virus, which was first identified last September. Dutch researchers said they’ve identified the receptor that is used by the coronavirus to invade cells.
Approaches to preventing the virus from binding to the receptor and gaining entry to cells may help combat infection, said study author Bart Haagmans, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center, in Rotterdam. “These findings provide further insight into how the virus causes severe pneumonia, as the receptor is present in the lower respiratory tract [trachea, airways or lungs],” he explained.
The research was published in the March 14 issue of the journal Nature.
The severity of the disease appears to vary, mirroring minor flu-like infections in some people and becoming life-threatening in others. Those with the most serious infections seem to have had other viral or bacterial infections at the same time, which may help explain the more severe cases, experts said.
The virus doesn’t seem as contagious as seasonal flu, and Haagmans said this appears to confirm the role of the receptor he identified. “This may be due to the fact that the receptor is minimally expressed in cells of the upper respiratory tract,” he said. “Therefore, it is also unlikely that the virus can become much more capable of spreading more universally.”
The discovery of the receptor could potentially help researchers inhibit the spread of the virus, said Haagmans. One approach would be to develop a vaccine that securely locked the cell door to the coronavirus receptor, preventing the virus from being able to storm the cell.
Haagmans said he doesn’t know why the virus seems to be deadly. He said it’s possible that scores of people with a less harmful form of the disease have not been identified, due to limited testing in the Arabian Peninsula, where the disease seems to have originated.
Secrets of New SARS-Like Virus Uncovered
WEDNESDAY March 13, 2013 — A discovery that shows how a novel — and often fatal — virus infects cells may help fight a health threat that has recently emerged on the world stage, researchers report.
A unique coronavirus was identified as the cause of severe respiratory illness in 14 people from Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom between April 2012 and February 2013, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Eight people have died after contracting the virus.
Coronaviruses — named for their crown-like projections visible under a microscope — are causes of the common cold but also are associated with more severe illness, such as SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed hundreds of people worldwide in 2003.
Although no deaths have been reported in the United States, the fact that there were clusters of people infected in the United Kingdom shows the new virus can be transmitted between humans, according to the CDC.
Now there’s a possible clue on how to stop the virus, which was first identified last September. Dutch researchers said they’ve identified the receptor that is used by the coronavirus to invade cells.
Approaches to preventing the virus from binding to the receptor and gaining entry to cells may help combat infection, said study author Bart Haagmans, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center, in Rotterdam. “These findings provide further insight into how the virus causes severe pneumonia, as the receptor is present in the lower respiratory tract [trachea, airways or lungs],” he explained.
The research was published in the March 14 issue of the journal Nature.
The severity of the disease appears to vary, mirroring minor flu-like infections in some people and becoming life-threatening in others. Those with the most serious infections seem to have had other viral or bacterial infections at the same time, which may help explain the more severe cases, experts said.
The virus doesn’t seem as contagious as seasonal flu, and Haagmans said this appears to confirm the role of the receptor he identified. “This may be due to the fact that the receptor is minimally expressed in cells of the upper respiratory tract,” he said. “Therefore, it is also unlikely that the virus can become much more capable of spreading more universally.”
The discovery of the receptor could potentially help researchers inhibit the spread of the virus, said Haagmans. One approach would be to develop a vaccine that securely locked the cell door to the coronavirus receptor, preventing the virus from being able to storm the cell.
Haagmans said he doesn’t know why the virus seems to be deadly. He said it’s possible that scores of people with a less harmful form of the disease have not been identified, due to limited testing in the Arabian Peninsula, where the disease seems to have originated.
Analysis of the virus’s genome showed that it is related to coronaviruses found in bats. Coronaviruses can infect a wide range of mammals and birds, and are considered to have what is called “zoonotic potential,” which means they can be transmitted to people.
Dr. Susan Gerber, a medical epidemiologist with the division of viral diseases at the CDC, said she thinks Haagmans’s research will be valuable because it helps scientists understand what happens at the cellular level of the disease. “This is going to be very important in the treatment of the virus,” she said.
Yet Gerber stressed that there is still much to learn about the virus and the infection it causes. “There are so few cases that have been identified of this virus infection,” she said. “We need more information.”
The CDC is advising people who develop severe acute lower respiratory illnesses, such as pneumonia, within 10 days after traveling from the Arabian Peninsula or neighboring countries to see their health provider.
The agency also recommended that those who haven’t traveled to the Arabian Peninsula but come into close contact with someone who has should be evaluated if they develop a severe acute lower respiratory illness.
More information
Learn more about the new coronavirus from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Posted: March 2013
