WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - SARS, the new flu-like disease that swept China and across many parts of the world over the past year, is twice as likely to kill patients in polluted areas, U.S. and Chinese researchers reported on Wednesday. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome swept through southern China beginning just one year ago, spreading to Beijing and Hong Kong and then to other southeast Asian nations and the world, including Canada. It infected more than 8,000 people, killing more than 700, according to the World Health Organization. Caused by a virus new to science, SARS, which has not infected anyone since July, has a death rate that varies between zero and about 17 percent. For instance in Hong Kong, 299 of the 1,755 SARS patients died -- 17 percent of patients. Writing in the journal Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source, the researchers said pollution could help explain the variable death rates -- at least in China. "Long-term and short-term exposure to air pollution has been associated with a variety of adverse health effects including acute respiratory inflammation, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and now SARS," said Dr. Zuo-Feng Zhang, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California Los Angeles, who helped lead the study. In mainland China, excluding Hong Kong, 5,327 cases of SARS were diagnosed and 349 patients died. The highest rates were seen in the north of China, the researchers said. The team at UCLA, Jiangsu Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and Fudan University School of Public Health in China said Guangdong, with an air pollution index of 75, had a low level of pollution while Tianjin, with an air pollution index of over 100, rated as highly polluted. In regions with low air pollution, the death rate was 4.08 percent, whereas in areas with moderate levels, such as Beijing, the death rate was 7.49 percent and in high air pollution areas it soared to 8.9 percent. The researchers did not look at other factors such as smoking, socioeconomic status or the treatment that the patients were given. Other health experts suspect that infection with another virus could affect death rates and at least one study suggests there could be a genetic susceptibility to serious infection. Scientists fear that SARS could return later this year. It is caused by a coronavirus and related viruses are known to be seasonal, like influenza is.
Members of the Engineering Regiment of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) participate in an exercise on a training ground for earthquake rescues during a demonstration for international media at a base ...
