SARS drug eyed for new peril

Mary Ann Benitez and Beatrice Siu Thursday, February 21, 2013 A virus that attacks the respiratory system and which has emerged in the Middle East could be treated with a drug that worked during the SARS crisis 10 years ago.Twelve people are known to have fallen sick and six have died from the novel coronavirus - now referred to as NCov - since September last year. The latest death was a 39-year-old British citizen. He was infected by his 60-year-old father, who was ill after travels in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and remains in hospital. A young female in the family was infected but did not need hospital treatment. Swiss researchers said NCov can penetrate the lining of breathing systems and evade the immune system like common cold coronaviruses. This shows it "grows very efficiently" in human cells and suggests it is well equipped for infecting humans, said Volker Thiel of the Institute of Immunobiology at Kantonal Hospital, who led the study. Malik Peiris, chair of virology of the University of Hong Kong's School of Public Health, said that was useful. The researchers "showed in an artificial human cell culture that the virus replicates very well, and they also showed interferon can stop the viral replication," he said. But it did not necessarily mean that the novel coronavirus could transmit efficiently from human to human. Peiris noted that interferon was used to treat some SARS patients in Canada in 2003 and had been tried with success on macaques in laboratory experiments. The head of the Chinese University of Hong Kong's division of respiratory medicine, David Hui Shu-cheong, also said the Swiss study did not "reflect infectivity" and more data is needed. The Guangdong doctor who went to a Hong Kong hotel infected 16 tourists after staying one night in February 2003, he recalled. But the elderly Briton has only infected two family members with NCov.  http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=4&art_id=131274&sid=39026049&con_type=1&d_str=20130221&fc=4