No treatments helped SARS Virus victims, study finds
Pastor Dale Morgan
*No treatments helped SARS Virus victims, study finds*
12 Sep 2006 18:22:38 GMT
Source: Reuters
WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - None of the treatments used to treat
SARS patients appears to have helped, researchers reported on Tuesday in
a study that illustrates how difficult it is to battle newly emerging
viruses.
Their systematic review of all the studies done on the 2003 SARS
epidemic fails to show any evidence that antivirals, steroids or other
therapies helped patients. A few suggested they caused harm.
"Despite an extensive literature reporting on SARS treatments, it was
not possible to determine whether treatments benefited patients during
the SARS outbreak," the researchers said in the online journal Public
Library of Science-Medicine.
"Some may have been harmful."
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome first broke out in China in 2002 and
spread around the world in 2003, carried mainly by airline travel and
then spread within hospitals.
It infected more than 8,000 people and killed 774 before it was brought
under control.
The infection was caused by a virus never seen before in people, named
the SARS coronavirus. Some animals are also affected and it may have
spread to people from exotic live animals sold for food.
Patients coughed and wheezed violently while ill with SARS, and
desperate doctors tried a variety of treatments.
Not many drugs exist to treat viruses, so most of the known antivirals,
including drugs that treat AIDS, hepatitis and influenza, were tried.
The World Health Organization set up an an International SARS Treatment
Study Group, which recommended a systematic review of potential SARS
treatments. Lauren Stockman of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention and colleagues in the United States and Britain found such
studies.
They also studied experiments done in the laboratory and on more general
acute respiratory distress syndrome.
Most studies on the use of steroids to reduce inflammation were
inconclusive and four found that the treatment possibly caused harm, the
researchers reported.
Some SARS survivors have been permanently disabled by the illness,
treatment or both.
The researchers said it was difficult to do the study as there was no
accepted treatment for SARS and no easy test for the virus. Doctors and
nurses were struggling to save patients' lives, not determine which
treatment might be the best.
If there is another outbreak of SARS or some other new virus, the group
recommended coordinated efforts from the beginning to assess which
treatment works best.