posted on Jun, 3 2003 @ 07:32 PM
SARS Researchers Discover Another New Virus
03-Jun-2003
Researchers searching for SARS have discovered another new virus in American children. At the Yale School of Medicine, they found that 19 out of 296
local children they studied had respiratory infections of an unknown cause�but they didn't have SARS. The new virus is called hMPV, and its discovery
solves a long mystery about where certain childhood illnesses come from.
"I think this virus probably accounts for a small but significant portion of respiratory tract illness in children," says Dr. Jeffrey S. Kahn.
Before this, 15 to 34% of pneumonia cases in children, along with a lung infection called bronchiolitis, had no known cause. "If you step back and
look at pneumonia in general, about 50% of the time we can identify a cause," Kahn says. "Obviously, in the other 50% we don't know what causes it.
So that suggests that there are unknown pathogens out there."
www.unknowncountry.com...