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China Identifies 2nd Suspected SARS Case 2004/1/8

A waitress hospitalized in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou was declared the country's second suspected SARS  case of the season on Thursday, just as the first patient was pronounced recovered and released. 

The 20-year-old waitress was hospitalized with a fever on Dec. 31, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It said she was under quarantine in Guangzhou's No. 8 People's Hospital. 

The announcement that she was officially a suspected case came just minutes after Xinhua reported that China's first SARS patient of the season, a 32-year-old television producer, left a Guangzhou hospital after being declared recovered. 

The World Health Organization, meanwhile, said it had dispatched a six-person team to Guangzhou to join Chinese health officials in investigating the first case. 

"The joint mission's major concerns will center around the potential human, animal and environmental sources of the SARS infection," WHO said in a statement. 


[動詞] 中心に置く; 中心をなす; 集中させる; 集中する; センタリングする;

In Shanghai, authorities detained an editor whose newspaper broke the news of China's first new SARS case. Cheng Yizhong, editor in chief of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, declined to comment on his reported questioning, but suggested the issue may have been resolved, without giving details. 


Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong province, where the first outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome is believed to have begun in November 2002. It killed 58 people and spread worldwide, claiming 774 lives before subsiding in July. 

Guangzhou[名詞] 旧広西省; 広州;subside[動詞] 静まる; 引く;

〔命を〕奪う The floods had claimed 150 lives. : その洪水で150人の死者が出た。


Earlier news reports said the waitress worked in a restaurant that served wild game. Scientists say the virus might have originated in wild animals. 


Authorities in Guangdong are slaughtering thousands of civet cats — a local delicacy — and other animals seized from wildlife markets. 


The city government says it plans to launch a campaign to kill rats on Saturday, the deadline for the civet slaughter. Experts are looking into whether the television producer might have been exposed to the virus by rats in his apartment complex. 


The waitress went to a hospital on Dec. 31, five days after she came down with a fever. 


Phone calls to Guangzhou health authorities on Thursday weren't answered. Guangzhou officials earlier in the week repeatedly denied reports in Hong Kong newspapers that the waitress was suspected of having SARS. 


A spokesman in Beijing for the World Health Organization, Roy Wadia, said he didn't immediately have any more information on the waitress's case. A spokesman at the WHO's Asian headquarters in Manila, Peter Cordingley, said China's Ministry of Health had informed the agency of what Chinese officials called a "possible suspected SARS case." 


Health authorities were investigating how the waitress might have contracted the virus and were disinfecting her home and other places where she had been, news reports said. 


Some 48 people who had "close contact" with her have been quarantined and 52 others were under unspecified "close medical observation," but none has shown symptoms, Xinhua said. 


The first patient, identified only by the surname Luo, also was treated at the No. 8 People's Hospital. 

"His condition improved daily with the conventional treatment," Xinhua said. 

Authorities quarantined 81 people who had contact with the man, but say none has shown symptoms. Most have been released. 

China blasted over AIDS spread 2003/9/4

blast[動詞] 激しく非難する; 撃つ; 吹きとばす; 爆破する; 枯れる;


The spread of AIDS in China is running largely unchecked with patients denied treatment and authorities not dealing with a blood collection scandal that led to millions of HIV infections, a leading human rights group says. 

Discriminatory laws as well as restrictions on freedom of speech had attributed to a growing crisis that China says has affected one million people in the country with HIV/AIDS, the New York-based Human Rights Watch charged in a 94-page report released on Wednesday. 

discriminatory[形容詞] 差別的な; 人種差別の;attribute[動詞] せいにする; 作者とする;Human Rights Watch : 人権擁護団体ヒューマン・ライツ・ウオッチ


The report -- based on dozens of interviews with HIV/AIDS sufferers as well as police, drug users, and AIDS workers in Beijing, Hong Kong and Yunnan province -- said the government was tolerating the social discrimination of sufferers. 

Yunnan[名詞] 雲南;sufferer[名詞] 苦難者; 被災者; 被害者; 患者; 罹災者;tolerate[動詞] 寛大にあつかう; 勘忍する; 大目にみる;


"Some flee from place to place with the constant threat of exposure as 'carriers' of the 'plague'," the report said. 

plague[動詞] 疫病にかからせる; 苦しめる;[名詞] 疫病; ペスト; 災厄; 不幸; やっかいもの; こまり者; 悪疫; 厄病;

Citing Chinese government documents, Human Rights Watch also said the number of people infected with the virus was far higher than the government admitted with a blood-selling scandal in the mid-1980s largely to blame. 

to blame : 責任があるblame[動詞] 非難する; 咎める; せいにする;[名詞] 非難; 責任;

Beijing continued to cover up "one of the world's greatest HIV/AIDS scandals," Human Rights Watch argued, adding that an impartial probe was needed. 

impartial[形容詞] 公平な; えこひいきがない;probe[動詞] 厳密に調べる; 探る;[名詞] 調査; 精査; 探り針; 宇宙探査機;

During the mid-1980s, entire villages in several Chinese provinces contracted HIV -- the virus that causes AIDS -- because of unsanitary blood collections. 

unsanitary[形容詞] 不衛生な; 非衛生的な;


Human Rights Watch said the government documents showed infection rates among blood donors ranged from four to 40 percent across seven provinces. The combined total population of the regions is 420 million. 

In Henan province alone, some activists argue more than 1 million sufferers contracted HIV from an unsanitary government-sponsored blood-for-money program. 


Hunan [名詞] 湖南省


The outbreak first came to light last decade, and the Chinese central government has acknowledged the problem in 2001 but has provided little detail on the extent of the outbreak. 


came to light : 明るみに

China's effective anti-SARS campaign is proof it can tackle AIDS, report said 
In August 2002, China said an estimated 1 million Chinese were carrying the virus but has not revealed how many infections resulted from the blood-for-money program. 

proof[形容詞] 検査済の; 保証付きの;[動詞] 耐久性にする; 防水加工する;[名詞] 証拠; 証明; 試験; 校正刷り;

"It is time for China to confront the blood collection scandal," Brad Adams, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, said. 

"Beijing should authorize a full and impartial investigation into the involvement of local authorities in the blood scandal and hold those responsible accountable."

authorize[動詞] 権能を与える; 正当と認める; 許可する; 

The Human Rights Watch report made sweeping recommendations for China in dealing with the spread of the virus. 

Though Beijing has recently issued positive policy statements about HIV/AIDS that included education and prevention projects as well as the non-discrimination of patients, the report said more needed to be done. 

Among the recommendations was the nationwide training of health workers, legislations to prevent discrimination against sufferers and an end to the arbitrary detention of drug users in forced treatment centers. 

detention[名詞] 拘留; 引き留めること; 留置; 拘置; 拘禁; 居残り; 抑留; 不法占有;arbitrary[形容詞] 随意の; 気紛れな; 独断的な; 専横な;

Many HIV sufferers have little or no access to health care and discrimination of HIV sufferers was widespread, the report said. Rather than combating it, the government tolerates such attitudes, it added. 

widespread[形容詞] 広範囲にわたる; 広げた;tolerate[動詞] 寛大にあつかう; 勘忍する; 大目にみる;

This then further spreads the epidemic by driving those carrying HIV/AIDS underground instead of helping them, the report said. 

Some local laws even prevented HIV-AIDS patients from using swimming pools or working in the food industry, the report found. 

"Discrimination is forcing many people to live as outcasts, and the Chinese government tolerates it instead of combating it," Adams said. 

"This is sure to make the AIDS crisis worse."

 outcast[名詞] 追放者; のけ者; 浮浪者; 除者; 日陰者;

The Human Rights Watch report said that China's successful campaign to eradicate the SARS virus had shown Beijing has the capacity to combat AIDS. 

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Australian Scientists Propose West Nile Vaccine

A vaccine using a harmless relative of the West Nile virus  could offer a way to protect people against the disease, researchers in Australia said on Monday. 


Mice vaccinated with the harmless virus, known as Kunjin, were protected against the sometimes deadly West Nile virus, they reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 


West Nile, seem commonly in Africa and parts of Europe, was imported into the United States in 1999. Carried by birds and mosquitoes it has quickly spread to most of the country and parts of Canada. 


This year it has sickened 182 people and killed five in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . 


Most people do not show any symptoms of the disease but it can cause encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain that can turn deadly. 


There is a vaccine for horses, which can die from West Nile, but no vaccine for people. Several companies and the U.S. government are working on a new vaccine. 

West Nile and Kunjin -- seen in southeast Asia and Australia -- are very similar genetically, but Kunjin produces only rare, nonfatal cases of disease. 


Roy Hall of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia and colleagues injected mice with Kunjin DNA and found the mice produced antibodies against the virus. 


When injected with what should have been lethal doses of West Nile, the mice did not even become ill, they reported. 


This approach was used in the first-ever vaccine invented -- the smallpox vaccine. Edward Jenner inoculated patients with a relatively harmless cousin of smallpox called cowpox, and protected them from smallpox. 

first-ever 【形】史上初の、初めてのinoculate[動詞] 予防接種をする;【ラテン語「芽を植えつける」の意; [名] inoculation】


The current smallpox vaccine uses vaccinia virus, another related virus. 

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Mice Become Antibody Factories in Experiment

U.S. researchers said on Sunday they had come up with a system for turning mice into custom-made, high-output antibody factories. 


come up with : を思いついて

They hope their system will lead to faster and more efficient ways to identify proteins, which in turn are used to design new drugs, in tests for various diseases, in genetic sequencing and in basic genetic research. 

sequencing[名詞] 配列; シーケンシング;sequence[動詞] 順番にならべる; 整理する;

Antibodies are immune system proteins that specifically recognize and attach to proteins, called antigens. 


They evolved to help the body recognize and fight invaders such as bacteria and viruses, or to find and destroy mutant cells including cancer cells. 

evolve[動詞] 進化させる; 徐々に発展させる; 進化する; 徐々に発展する;

Scientists use them as tools. For instance, many tests that check to see if a patient has a disease use antibodies. 


And in basic lab work, antibodies can be engineered to identify proteins for various uses. 


engineered : 工作することができる

"Antibodies are the most commonly used reagents to measure proteins in humans, but antibodies, up to now, have been very complicated and expensive to create," said Dr. Ross Chambers, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern's Center for Biomedical Inventions, who worked on the study. 

reagent[名詞] 試薬;

"Because of that, antibodies on the market today target only about 4,000 proteins, which is only a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of proteins in the human body." 

fraction[動詞] 細分する;[名詞] 断片; 一部; 分数; 端数;

Writing in the September issue of Nature Biotechnology Chambers, center director Dr. Stephen Albert Johnston said they found a quick way to force lab mice to create antibodies against any protein they wanted, by making a kind of vaccine. 


In 1992 Johnston's team invented genetic immunization, which allowed scientists to inject genes instead of proteins into animals to produce an immune response to a particular protein. 

immunization[名詞] 免疫性を与えること; 予防接種;


The new technique, a modification of genetic immunization, uses the antigen gene they want to target -- the DNA coding for the protein they are after. They added several elements to make the method far more efficient, in essence revving up the immune response of the mice so they made lots and lots of antibodies. 

rev[動詞] 急に上がる; 急に上げる;

One of these extra elements was the gene controlling an immune system signaling compound called GSF. 


"A surprising result was that we could even make mice make antibodies to their own proteins," Johnston said in a statement. 


"We think this system could be used to make antibodies to all the proteins in the genome," he added. 

genome[名詞] ゲノム;

"We also hope these antibodies will contribute to discoveries that drive new advances in disease treatment." 


The process might also be used in a new approach to diagnostic tests called biosignatures. 


These tests analyze hundreds of proteins in a small amount of blood so that doctors can detect a disease even before symptoms begin. 

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Bone Marrow Cells Can Repair Damaged Heart

Bone marrow cells can be used to repair a heart damaged by a heart attack, U.S. researchers said on Sunday. 



The cells, genetically engineered to make them stronger and more likely to survive, restored the heart's pumping capacity by 80 percent to 90 percent in animal models in rats, the team at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston said. 


Writing in the September issue of the journal Nature Medicine, they said they hoped their experiments will someday lead to a treatment for human patients whose hearts are irreparably damaged by heart attacks. 

irreparably[副詞] 修復できない位に;

"This is a very positive development that we think holds immense promise," Dr. Victor Dzau, who led the study, said. "But there is certainly more work to do." 


His team used bone marrow cells called mesenchymal stem cells. These cells are already used to repair cartilage and bone defects. 

cartilage[名詞] 軟骨;


They should, in theory, be able to generate new heart tissue but experiments in pigs have failed so far because the cells die. 


So the team added a gene called Akt1, which can prevent transplanted cells from dying. 


It worked. 


"The results were truly remarkable," Dzau said in a statement. 


"The hearts that received the stem cells modified with Akt1 exhibited an amazing amount of reparative growth, significantly, if not completely, restoring cardiac function." 


When injected into the hearts or rats given artificial heart attacks, the stem cells hooked up with the heart cells and generated more heart-like cells, the team reported. 

hooked up : 接続された


"The hope is this sort of process can be turned into a gene therapy for humans," added Dr. Abeel Mangi, formerly of Brigham and Women's and now at Massachusetts General Hospital. 

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