The new virus that has emerged in the Middle East may be better at infecting humans than has been hoped – but may also be treatable, scientists said today.
A laboratory study has found the virus is well able to get into human lungs and multiply there.
Until this month the virus was only known to have been contracted in the Middle East.
It is a coronavirus, a kind of virus that can cause the common cold but was also responsible for the SARS outbreak a few years ago.
So far it has killed five people worldwide. And after two members of one family came back with it from the Middle East to the UK, a third member has also succumbed.
Now the Swiss researchers warn the new virus may be as good as the common cold at avoiding human responses in the early stages of infection.
This might be tackled by boosting the immune response by treatment with proteins known as lambda-type interferons.
The findings are published today by mBio, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The Swiss researchers worked with other European scientists in Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark.
Researcher Volker Thiel, of The Institute of Immunobiology at Kantonal Hospital, St Gallen, Switzerland, said: "We don’t know whether the cases we observe are the tip of the iceberg. Or whether many more people are infected without showing severe symptoms."
mBio 19 February 2013
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