Faculty Bibliography

China said yesterday it had sealed off its main laboratory for SARS research after an apparent safety breach there led to four confirmed and suspected cases, including a death, in a new outbreak of the respiratory disease. As officials tried to determine the extent of the new outbreak, they set up emergency controls and began tracing contacts of all those confirmed or suspected to have contracted SARS. The four patients had been cared for in five hospitals but were not initially put in isolation. One patient travelled on three trains while she had symptoms of severe acute respiratory syndrome. Song and [Li] were confirmed cases. [Wei] and [Yang] are suspected cases of SARS, officials said

Health officials say that any new case of avian flu must be taken seriously because it can spread rapidly among birds and it can be quite serious in humans on the rare occasions when they are infected. In recent years, cases of avian flu in Asia, Europe and North America have prompted the slaughter of millions of chickens and ducks. The World Health Organization has sounded an alarm because some strains of the virus -- not the one found in Westchester -- have killed people, including at least 16 victims in Vietnam and Thailand early this year. It was not until February that C.D.C. tested the sample, when scientists there found that the virus was not from the H1 group, Dr. [Nancy J. Cox] said. A subsequent test ruled out another family of flu viruses, Type B. Further testing showed that it was Type A, but not the H1, H3 or H5 subtypes. Finally, on March 17, scientists using other tests identified the virus as H7N2. The next day, Dr. Cox said, C.D.C. notified health officials in New York that they had a suspect human case of avian flu. To be certain that the sample had not been contaminated in a laboratory, they did further tests

The findings suggest that unidentified nonalcoholic components in beer and spirits may play an important role in precipitating gout attacks, a form of arthritis, said the head of the team, Dr. Hyon Choi of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The participants in Choi's study were 47,150 gout-free male health professionals who answered a questionnaire when they entered the study in 1986 and then every two years until 1998. Of the participants, 730 developed the disease. More research is needed to identify such possible factors and to determine whether changing the type of alcoholic beverage or reducing the consumption of alcohol would cut the incidence of gout, Choi's team said

Botswana is the ninth previously polio-free country where the crippling disease has reappeared in recent months and the farthest from its presumed source, northern Nigeria. There, officials have stopped polio vaccinations because of religious and political opposition to it, said officials of the WHO, a U.N. agency in Geneva. In the past 18 months, polio viruses genetically linked to northern Nigeria have caused new cases of polio in nine previously polio-free countries. Polio virus is endemic in five countries besides Nigeria: Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Niger and Pakistan. Polio was endemic in 125 countries when the WHO began its polio eradication program in 1988

Dr. Lawrence, who was known as Jerry, was also an expert in infectious diseases, and his research generated other advances in immunology. Dr. Lawrence conducted research on the way the body rejects transplanted organs and how various conditions can damage tissue. Transfer factor is a small molecule, and it has been the center of scientific mystery, in part because Dr. Lawrence and other scientists were unable to identify it precisely. Some scientists suspect that transfer factor represents bits of many molecules. Dr. Lawrence also identified a link between the way cells respond immunologically to microbes like the bacterium that causes tuberculosis and the type of immune responses involved in the rejection of transplanted organs, said Dr. Fred T. Valentine, an immunologist who worked with Dr. Lawrence at N.Y.U

Dr. [H. SHERWOOD LAWRENCE], who was known as Jerry, was also an expert in infectious diseases, and his research generated other advances in immunology. Dr. Lawrence conducted research on the way the body rejects transplanted organs and how various conditions can damage tissue. Transfer factor is a small molecule, and it has been the center of scientific mystery, in part because Dr. Lawrence and other scientists were unable to identify it precisely. Some scientists suspect that transfer factor represents bits of many molecules. Dr. Lawrence also identified a link between the way cells respond immunologically to microbes like the bacterium that causes tuberculosis and the type of immune responses involved in the rejection of transplanted organs, said Dr. Fred T. Valentine, an immunologist who worked with Dr. Lawrence at NYU

Botswana is the ninth previously polio-free country where the crippling disease has reappeared in recent months and the farthest from its presumed source, northern Nigeria. There, officials have stopped polio vaccinations because of religious and political opposition to it, said officials of the WHO, a U.N. agency in Geneva. In the past 18 months, polio viruses genetically linked to northern Nigeria have caused new cases of polio in nine previously polio-free countries. Besides Botswana, they are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo

The cases involve two graduate students who worked at the Institute of Viral Disease Control of the Chinese Centers for Disease Control and who were reported to have become ill nearly a month apart. One was identified only as a Ms. Song, 26, who became ill about March 25; the other was identified as a Mr. Yang, 31, whose onset of illness was April 17. The other two cases involve Song's mother, identified as a Ms. Wei, who died on Monday, and a nurse, identified as a Ms. Li, who cared for Song. Questions immediately arose about the apparent breach in the Beijing laboratory and why doctors and health officials had not been more alert to the possibility that Song had SARS earlier in the course of her illness, particularly because she worked in the SARS laboratory that tests specimens sent from all over China and is a leader in research on the virus

Botswana is the ninth previously polio-free country where the crippling disease has reappeared in recent months and the farthest from its presumed source, northern Nigeria. There, officials stopped polio vaccinations because of religious and political opposition, said officials of W.H.O., a United Nations agency in Geneva. In the past 18 months, polio viruses genetically linked to northern Nigeria have caused new cases of polio in nine previously polio-free countries. Besides Botswana, they are Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Ivory Coast and Togo

Whether beer contains a factor that promotes gout or wine a protective factor, or both, is not known. More research is needed to identify such possible factors and to determine whether changing the type of alcoholic beverage or reducing alcohol consumption would cut the incidence of gout, [Hyon K. Choi]'s team said