UTAH STATE RESEARCHERS SEEKING TREATMENTS FOR SARS

Researchers at Utah State University’s Institute for Antiviral Research are studying the recently identified severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus in an effort to find drugs that will effectively control human infection.

The work at Utah State, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is being coordinated with related research efforts by the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and researchers at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).

Dale Barnard, associate professor of virology at Utah State, is using several “relatives” of the SARS virus to help discover a potential treatment for SARS. The related viruses being used in the research include avian bronchitis virus and a mouse hepatitis virus. Initially, all potential new drugs are tested using a well-established and understood human coronavirus which is closely related to the SARS virus. The virus being used causes only a mild form of the common cold. Work with the virus will be done in cultured cell systems in one of the university’s

high-containment laboratories using rigid biohazard control safeguards established by the NIH and CDC, says Institute for Antiviral Research Director Robert Sidwell.

“The initial focus of the research is on drugs currently approved for use in humans, in the hope that one will be sufficiently effective to allow its clinical use to be extended to SARS,” Sidwell says.

New chemical agents, representing many classes of drugs, will then be tested to provide clues as to which might be most promising to control the disease. As a safety measure, only those drugs with the greatest potential against the SARS-related viruses are actually evaluated against the SARS virus.

Weekly conference calls between Barnard, Sidwell and representatives of NIH, CDC, and USAMRIID who are involved in SARS studies help researchers to immediately correlate their findings, assuring more rapid development of any potential SARS treatment.

SARS has been the recent focus of international media attention and concern among healthcare workers, governments and travelers. An apparently new virus, SARS can induce serious respiratory infections in humans. No deaths due to SARS have been reported in the United States, but serious outbreaks of the disease have occurred in China, other far eastern countries, and in Toronto, Canada. The virus appears to be a modification of one of the coronaviruses that have been known to occasionally infect humans, birds, cattle, and other animals, Sidwell says. There are no vaccines or drugs available to treat the infection, although it appears from experience in the United States that good clinical care of infected patients may prevent the infection from becoming too serious.

More information about SARS is available online from the CDC at www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/.

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