BREAKING NEWS: First Clinical Studies Shows That The New China’s 2019-nCoV Virus Closely Resembles SARS With Almost The Similar Potency
Source: Thailand Medical News Jan 25, 2020 4 years, 10 months, 4 weeks, 3 hours, 20 minutes ago
The
2019-nCoV virus that is rapidly spreading in
China and nearby countries seems to trigger symptoms similar to those seen in the severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (
SARS)
coronavirus outbreak in 2003, two new studies show.
The first
clinical study was published on Jan. 24 in
The Lancet journal, these are the first clinical studies conducted on patients struck by the new
coronavirus, dubbed
2019-nCoV. As of Saturday morning, there were 1287 confirmed cases and 41 deaths in
China tied to the coronavirus, which originated in the central Chinese city of
Wuhan.
Both clinical studies examine the course of infection in some of the first cases of the
Wuhan virus.
In the first study, researchers looked at clinical records, laboratory results, imaging findings and epidemiological data on the first 41 infected people admitted to the hospital in
Wuhan between Dec. 16, 2019 and Jan. 2, 2020.
The patients were typically middle-aged (average age 49), three-quarters were men, and two-thirds had visited a local seafood market thought to be where the virus originated.
As with the 2003
SARS outbreak in
China, most patients who came down with the
Wuhan coronavirus (
2019-nCoV virus) were healthy, without any chronic underlying health issues. And symptoms also resembled those of
SARS, said Chinese researchers led by Dr Bin Cao, from the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and Capital Medical University, both in Beijing.
It was observed that all of the hospitalized patients had developed
pneumonia, nearly all (98%) had a fever, three-quarters developed a cough, 44% felt fatigued, and 55% had some shortness of breath. Symptoms such as headache or diarrhea were rare, however.
However "despite sharing some similar symptoms to
SARS (such as fever, dry cough, shortness of breath), there are some important differences," Dr Cao told
Thailand Medical News.
For instance, people with the new
virus typically didn't have runny noses or other symptoms involving the upper respiratory tract, he said. And very few had intestinal symptoms such as diarrhea, which occurred in about a quarter of
SARS patients.
Severe symptoms and illness-enough to require admittance to the ICU—occurred in about a third of the hospitalized patients, Dr Cao's team said, and six patients died.
It was seen that a condition involving immune system dysfunction known as a "
cytokine storm" occurred in some of these very ill patients, but it's not yet clear how the new
virus affects the immune system, the researchers said.
The report noted that as of Jan. 22, a majority of patients in the study (68%)
have recovered enough to be discharged from the hospital.
The second study which was the first to involve
gene analysis, researchers tracked the course of
2019-nCoV in a family of seven people. Five family members had recently traveled to
Wuhan and were found to carry
2019-nCoV, and one family member who had not traveled with them also was found to be infected with the virus.
As none of the infected family members had visited food markets or animals while in
Wuhan, it suggested that
person-to-person transmission was at play.
It was observed that the seventh family member,a child whose mother said had worn a surgical mask during their stay in
Wuhan was not infected with the
virus. As well, a second child was infected but showed no
clinical symptoms of the illness, according to researchers led by Dr. Kwok-Yung Yuen, from the University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital. That suggests that
2019-nCoV could be
spread person-to-person by people who don't even realize they are infected, the researchers said.
Dr Yuen told Thailand
Medical News, "Our findings are consistent with person-to person transmission of this new
coronavirus in hospital and family settings, and the reports of infected travelers in other countries. Because
asymptomatic infection appears possible, controlling the epidemic will also rely on isolating patients, tracing and quarantining contacts as early as possible, educating the public on both food and personal hygiene, and ensuring health care workers comply with infection control."
Upon examining the course of illness among the various family members, symptoms appeared to develop within a few days of contact with sick individuals. Suggesting that the
incubation period of the disease is between 2 to 7 days.
Further
gene tests revealed that five of the family members carried a form of
2019-nCoV that had a type of protein allowing it to enter healthy cells. Yuen's team was also able to use samples from two patients to map the full
genome of
2019-nCoV.
Study co-author Dr. Rosana Wing-Shan Poon, from the University of Hong Kong told
Thailand Medical News, "With the improved surveillance network and laboratory capability developed following the
SARS pandemic,
China has now been able to recognize this new outbreak within a few weeks and has made the virus genome publicly available to help control its spread. Learning the lessons from
SARS, which started as animal-to-human transmission, all game meat trading should be better regulated to terminate this potential transmission route. Further investigations are needed to clarify the potential threat posed by this emerging
virus and
asymptomatic cases."
Reference : Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China
Prof Chaolin Huang,MD - Yeming Wang,MD- Prof Xingwang Li,MD- Prof Lili Ren, PhD- Prof Jianping Zhao,MD- Yi Hu,MD-et al.. The Lancet –January 24th 2020,
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30183-5 
