Severe Acute Respiratory SyndromeSARScoronavirusmolecular mechanismstherapyvaccination

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a new infectious disease caused by a novel coronavirus that leads to deleterious pulmonary pathological features. Due to its high morbidity and mortality and widespread occurrence, SARS has evolved as an important respiratory disease which may be encountered everywhere in the world. The virus was identified as the causative agent of SARS due to the efforts of a WHO-led laboratory network. The potential mutability of the SARS-CoV genome may lead to new SARS outbreaks and several regions of the viral genomes open reading frames have been identified which may contribute to the severe virulence of the virus. With regard to the pathogenesis of SARS, several mechanisms involving both direct effects on target cells and indirect effects via the immune system may exist. Vaccination would offer the most attractive approach to prevent new epidemics of SARS, but the development of vaccines is difficult due to missing data on the role of immune system-virus interactions and the potential mutability of the virus. Even in a situation of no new infections, SARS remains a major health hazard, as new epidemics may arise. Therefore, further experimental and clinical research is required to control the disease. Introduction Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is the first new infectious disease of this millennium. SARS has originated from Southern China at the end of 2002 and has a high mortality and morbidity. Within a period of six months beginning at the end of 2002, the disease has affected more than 8,000 people and killed nearly 800 [1]. The disease poses a new threat for respiratory medicine and represents a challenge for antiviral drug development and administration [2,3]. SARS is caused by a novel, SARS-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) [4-6] which has been identified by a World Health Organization (WHO)-led global laboratory network. The first cases of SARS were reported from a hospital in Hanoi, Vietnam, by Carlo Urbani, a WHO scientist who himself died from the disease [7]. After reports from Published: 20 January 2005 Respiratory Research 2005, 6:8 doi:10.1186/1465-9921-6-8 Received: 10 November 2004 Accepted: 20 January 2005 This article is available from: http://respiratory-research.com/content/6/1/8 © 2005 Groneberg et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.