IVF as cheap as £170, doctors claim

8 July 2013 Last updated at 10:08 ET By James Gallagher Health and Science reporter, BBC News

The cost of IVF can be cut dramatically from thousands of pounds to around £170 to start a "new era" in IVF, fertility doctors from Belgium claim.

Twelve children have been born through the technique, which replaces expensive medical equipment with "kitchen cupboard" ingredients.

Data, presented at fertility conference in London, suggests the success rate is similar to conventional IVF.

Experts said there was big potential to open up IVF to the developing world.

Cut price

Fertility treatment is expensive. In the UK, it costs around £5,000 per cycle.

Continue reading the main story

The potential implications for this could be quite amazing."

End Quote Stuart Lavery Director of IVF, Hammersmith Hospital, London

High levels of the gas carbon dioxide are needed when growing embryos in an IVF clinic in order to control the acidity levels. This is maintained using carbon dioxide incubators, medical grade gas and air purification.

Instead, the team at the Genk Institute for Fertility Technology mixed inexpensive citric acid and bicarbonate of soda to produce carbon dioxide.

Lead researcher Prof Willem Ombelet said: "We succeeded with an almost Alka-Selzer like technique. Our first results suggest it is at least as good as normal IVF and we now have 12 healthy babies born."

The results, presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference, showed a pregnancy rate of 30% - approximately the same as IVF.

The researchers believe the cost of IVF can be cut to just 10-15% of services in Western countries.

'Not for everyone'

The technique cannot completely replace conventional IVF.

It would not help men with severe infertility who require more advanced treatment in which the sperm is injected into the egg, known intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection.

However, Prof Ombelet told the BBC the aim was to bring fertility treatment to the rest of the world.

"If you don't have a child in Africa, or also South America or Asia, it's a disaster. It's a disaster from an economic point of view, a psychological point of view. They throw you out of the family. You need to help them and nobody helps them."

Even in rich, Western, countries many couples are still unable to afford IVF and the studies are attracting interest.

"We've got demand from the US already."

Geeta Nargund, at St George's Hospital, London, is planning to introduce the techniques to the UK: "We have an obligation to bring down the cost of IVF, otherwise we'll have a situation where only the affluent can afford it."

Stuart Lavery, the director of IVF at Hammersmith Hospital in London, said the study had the potential to have a big impact globally.

"This isn't just about low cost IVF in west London, this is all about can you bring IVF to countries which have unsophisticated medical services where infertility has an incredibly low profile.

"They've show that using a very cheap, very simple technique that you can culture embryos and you can do IVF.

"The weakness of the study is they've done it in a big lab in Belgium, so they need go out and do the same study in Africa now. But if this is real potentially you're talking about bringing IVF to corners of the world where there is no IVF. This is enormous, the potential implications for this could be quite amazing."

The researchers anticipate starting out in Ghana, Uganda or Cape Town.

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Late nights 'sap kids' brain power'

8 July 2013 Last updated at 19:45 ET By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

Late nights and lax bedtime routines can blunt young children's minds, research suggests.

The findings on sleep patterns and brain power come from a UK study of more than 11,000 seven-year-olds.

Youngsters who had no regular bedtime or who went to bed later than 21:00 had lower scores for reading and maths.

Lack of sleep may disrupt natural body rhythms and impair how well the brain learns new information say the study authors.

They gathered data on the children at the ages of three, five and then seven to find out how well they were doing with their learning and whether this might be related to their sleeping habits.

Continue reading the main story

Establishing a good bedtime routine early in childhood is probably best, but it's never too late"

End Quote Study author Prof Sacker

Erratic bedtimes were most common at the age of three, when around one in five of the children went to bed at varying times.

By the age of seven, more than half the children had a regular bedtime of between 19:30 and 20:30.

Overall, children who had never had regular bedtimes tended to fare worse than their peers in terms of test scores for reading, maths and spatial awareness.

The impact was more obvious throughout early childhood in girls than in boys and appeared to be cumulative.

The researchers, led by Prof Amanda Sacker from University College London, said it was possible that inconsistent bedtimes were a reflection of chaotic family settings and it was this, rather than disrupted sleep, that had an impact on cognitive performance in children.

"We tried to take these things into account," said Prof Sacker.

The children with late and erratic bedtimes came from more socially disadvantaged backgrounds and were less likely to be read to each night and, generally, watched more TV - often on a set in their own bedroom.

After controlling for such factors, the link between poorer mental performance and lax bedtimes remained.

The findings are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Prof Sacker said: "The take-home message is really that routines really do seem to be important for children.

"Establishing a good bedtime routine early in childhood is probably best, but it's never too late."

She said there was no evidence that putting children to bed much earlier than 19:30 added anything in terms of brain power.

Dr Robert Scott-Jupp of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said: "At first glance, this research might seem to suggest that less sleep makes children less intelligent, however, it is clearly more complicated than that.

"While it's likely that social and biological brain development factors are inter-related in a complex way, in my opinion, for schoolchildren to perform their best, they should all, whatever their background, get a good night's sleep."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

'Smelly urine' bladder cancer test

8 July 2013 Last updated at 20:22 ET By Michelle Roberts Health editor, BBC News online

UK scientists have made a device that can "smell" bladder cancer in urine samples.

It uses a sensor to detect gaseous chemicals that are given off if cancer cells are present.

Early trials show the tests gives accurate results more than nine times in 10, its inventors told PLoS One journal.

But experts say more studies are needed to perfect the test before it can become widely available.

Each year around 10,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with bladder cancer.

Continue reading the main story

Promising though this work is, we're not there yet"

End Quote Dr Sarah Hazell, Cancer Research UK

Doctors have been searching for ways to spot this cancer at an earlier stage when it is more treatable.

And many have been interested in odours in urine, since past work suggests dogs can be trained to recognise the scent of cancer.

Prof Chris Probert, from Liverpool University, and Prof Norman Ratcliffe, of the University of the West of England, say their new device can read cancer smells.

"It reads the gases that chemicals in the urine can give off when the sample is heated," said Prof Ratcliffe.

To test their device, they used 98 samples of urine - 24 from men known to have bladder cancer and 74 from men with bladder-related problems but no cancer.

Prof Probert said the results were very encouraging but added: "We now need to look at larger samples of patients to test the device further before it can be used in hospitals."

Dr Sarah Hazell, senior science communication officer at Cancer Research UK, said: "It would be great to be able to detect the 'smell' of cancer in a robust and practical way but, promising though this work is, we're not there yet.

"This latest method is still at an early stage of development, and needs to be tried out on a much larger set of samples, including samples from both women and men.

"The researchers say that the test would be around 96% accurate in practice and their findings are only based on a relatively small number of samples, taken only from men. But it is another promising step towards detecting bladder cancer from urine samples, something that would ultimately provide a less invasive means of diagnosing the disease."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

New virus 'not yet global threat'

4 July 2013 Last updated at 20:40 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

The deadly coronavirus that emerged last year does not currently appear to be infectious enough to pose a global threat, researchers say.

Their analysis of 55 cases of Middle East respiratory-syndrome coronavirus, published in the Lancet, indicated the virus struggled to spread in people.

But the virus may be mutating, which means it could become a much greater threat.

It is similar to viruses that cause Sars and the common cold.

So far there have been 77 confirmed cases and 41 deaths. Most infections come from an unidentified animal source, but there have been cases in which the virus has spread between people.

On Friday it was revealed that the World Health Organization has convened a telephone conference of its International Health Relations Emergency Committee next week.

The committee has only met once before ,during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.

It said the meeting was a proactive approach, rather than a sign the situation was escalating.

Going global?

The team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris tried to calculate the average number of people each infected person passed the virus on to - what is known as a "basic reproduction value".

Continue reading the main story

My concern is that people read this and not worry about it, but the opposite is true. This is the perfect time to identify the animal host and stop it"

End Quote Prof Arnaud Fontanet Pasteur Institute

A high value means the number of cases can increase rapidly and potentially spread around the world, but a number less than one would mean the virus was destined to fade away.

The study indicated each patient would, on average, infect 0.69 others. So three infected patients would pass the virus on to just two people.

Prof Arnaud Fontanet told the BBC: "The virus as it currently stands is not able to start an epidemic.

"My concern is that people read this and not worry about it, but the opposite is true. This is the perfect time to identify the animal host and stop it."

In the early stages of Sars in late 2002 it had a basic reproduction value of 0.8, but eventually the virus mutated and could spread more easily.

"Sars' adaption to humans took just several months, whereas Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus has already been circulating more than a year in human populations without mutating into a pandemic form," Prof Arnaud Fontanet added.

There have been cases in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Additional cases in France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and the UK were linked to travel to the Middle East.

On Thursday, the death of a patient in the UK was announced. He had been treated for kidney failure and severe breathing difficulties since being flown in from Qatar in September.

Dr Benjamin Neuman, from the University of Reading, said: "The authors have done their best to predict how Middle East respiratory syndrome will spread based on the few cases that we know about, and found that the virus appears to be slowly dying out.

"But other work has shown that the virus is changing, and that change makes it difficult to predict the future of Middle East respiratory syndrome.

"What most concerns me is that people are still becoming infected from an unknown source."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Baby success for new IVF screen

7 July 2013 Last updated at 19:02 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

A baby has been born in the US using a new method for screening embryos during IVF which could dramatically reduce costs, researchers report.

Connor Levy was born in May after the test, devised at Oxford University, helped doctors pick an embryo with the best chance of success.

Only one in three attempts at IVF results in a baby as abnormalities in an embryo's DNA are common.

Large trials are now needed to see how effective the method is, experts say.

If there are abnormalities with the packages of DNA, called chromosomes, in the embryo then it will not implant in the womb or if it does the foetus will not reach term.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

All this hard work and we have finally got our little tiny human being named Connor"

End Quote Marybeth Scheidts Mother

It is a problem which increases rapidly with age. One quarter of embryos are abnormal in a woman's early 30s, but this soars to three quarters by the time a woman reaches her late 30s and early 40s.

Some clinics already offer a form of chromosome screening, but it can add between £2,000 and £3,000 to the cost of IVF in the UK. Connor's mother, Marybeth Scheidts, said it would have cost her $6,000 (£4,100) for the test in Pennsylvania.

The new test takes advantage of the dramatic advances in sequencing the human genome. Within 24 hours it can ensure the correct number of chromosomes are present.

Dr Dagan Wells from Oxford University told the BBC: "Current tests are adding a significant amount of money on to an already expensive procedure and that is limiting access; most patients are having to pay for this out of pocket themselves.

"What our technique does is it gives you the number of chromosomes and other biological information about the embryo at a low cost - probably about two thirds of the price of existing methods of screening."

He says trials are now needed to see if it could improve IVF success rates.

Tears of joy

The baby and a further pregnancy resulting from the screening method will be announced at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference.

Marybeth Scheidts, 36, and her husband David Levy, 41, had been trying to conceive naturally for four years and also tried artificial insemination.

In the screening three of the 13 embryos produced were healthy. Without chromosome screening, picking the right embryo would have been down to luck. Instead they were successful on their first attempt.

Marybeth told BBC News Online that the years of trying were tough: "It takes its toll, there were some days I would break down and cry, I wanted to hide in my bedroom and say stop.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

They done the work in humans, they've pregnancies - so it's a pretty powerful proof of concept study using an exciting technique"

End Quote Stuart Lavery Director of IVF at Hammersmith Hospital

"Then to see him... all this hard work and we have finally got our little tiny human being named Connor."

Dr Michael Glassner, the fertility doctor at Main Line Health System where the IVF took place, said such techniques would become more common.

"If you have ever sat across the desk from a patient that has failed or is in that crossroads of thinking of another cycle and you look in their eyes where they are barely able to hold on to their hopes and dreams - anything that is so significantly going to impact pregnancy rates is going to become standard.

"So I think five years from now you fast forward - yes I think it will be standard."

Commenting on the study, Stuart Lavery, a consultant gynaecologist and director of IVF at Hammersmith Hospital, said: "This is amazing science.

"They done the work in humans, they've pregnancies - so it's a pretty powerful proof of concept study using an exciting technique."

He also praised the researchers for saying proper trials needed to be conducted before it was used widely.

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

IVF as cheap as £170, doctors claim

8 July 2013 Last updated at 10:08 ET By James Gallagher Health and Science reporter, BBC News

The cost of IVF can be cut dramatically from thousands of pounds to around £170 to open up a "new era" in IVF, fertility doctors from Belgium claim.

Twelve children have been born through their technique, which replaces expensive medical equipment with "kitchen cupboard" ingredients.

Data, presented at fertility conference in London, suggests the success rate is similar to conventional IVF.

Experts said there was big potential to open up IVF to the developing world.

Cut price

Fertility treatment is expensive. In the UK, it costs around £5,000 per cycle.

Continue reading the main story

The potential implications for this could be quite amazing."

End Quote Stuart Lavery Director of IVF, Hammersmith Hospital, London

High levels of the gas carbon dioxide are needed when growing embryos in an IVF clinic in order to control the acidity levels. This is maintained using carbon dioxide incubators, medical grade gas and air purification.

Instead, the team at the Genk Institute for Fertility Technology mixed inexpensive citric acid and bicarbonate of soda to produce carbon dioxide.

Lead researcher Prof Willem Ombelet said: "We succeeded with an almost Alka-Selzer like technique. Our first results suggest it is at least as good as normal IVF and we now have 12 healthy babies born."

The results, presented to the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference, showed a pregnancy rate of 30% - approximately the same as IVF.

The researchers believe the cost of IVF can be cut to just 10-15% of services in Western countries.

'Not for eveyone'

The technique cannot completely replace conventional IVF.

It would not help men with severe infertility who require more advanced treatment in which the sperm is injected into the egg, known intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection.

However, Prof Ombelet told the BBC the aim was to bring fertility treatment to the rest of the world.

"If you don't have a child in Africa, or also South America or Asia, it's a disaster. It's a disaster from an economic point of view, a psychological point of view. They throw you out of the family. You need to help them and nobody helps them."

Even in rich, Western, countries many couples are still unable to afford IVF and the studies are attracting interest.

"We've got demand from the US already."

Geeta Nargund, at St George's Hospital, London, is planning to introduce the techniques to the UK: "We have an obligation to bring down the cost of IVF, otherwise we'll have a situation where only the affluent can afford it."

Stuart Lavery, the director of IVF at Hammersmith Hospital in London, said the study had the potential to have a big impact globally.

"This isn't just about low cost IVF in west London, this is all about can you bring IVF to countries which have unsophisticated medical services where infertility has an incredibly low profile.

"They've show that using a very cheap, very simple technique that you can culture embryos and you can do IVF.

"The weakness of the study is they've done it in a big lab in Belgium, so they need go out and do the same study in Africa now. But if this is real potentially you're talking about bringing IVF to corners of the world where there is no IVF. This is enormous, the potential implications for this could be quite amazing."

The researchers anticipate starting out in Ghana, Uganda or Cape Town.

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

'Named clinician' for older patients

4 July 2013 Last updated at 23:05 ET

Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.

Jeremy Hunt: We're asking NHS England to ensure there is a named clinician responsible for every vulnerable older person

Elderly people in England are to have a named clinician responsible for their care when they leave hospital, the health secretary has said.

The initiative was unveiled at an event to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the National Health Service.

Mr Hunt says it will to help create a "more personal service".

But Labour have said the NHS' anniversary is overshadowed by a "real sense of worry about where the NHS is heading".

'Wrong path'

At an event at Guy's Hospital in London, Mr Hunt proposed that a named doctor or nurse would be responsible for vulnerable patients "at all times".

He said: "As we celebrate, we also reflect. The world today is very different to 1948. The old model was curable illnesses where you went into hospital unwell and came out better.

"Yet most people now leave hospital with long-term conditions which need to be supported and managed at home.

"So the challenge today is to provide integrated, co-ordinated, out of hospital care. Something where the NHS, with our tradition of family doctors and primary care, could lead the world.

"But to do that we need to know that there is a clinician accountable for vulnerable older people in the community, just as there is a consultant responsible for them in hospital...

"They should be named so that patients, families and carers all know where the buck stops."

Mr Hunt said the eight million people with diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease "need radically different models of care to what the NHS has been accustomed to" and could benefit from the plan.

The "named clinician" proposal is part of a consultation being launched on an updated "NHS Mandate".

Continue reading the main story

Patients and staff have precious little faith that the NHS is safe in this government's hands"

End Quote Andy Burnham Shadow health secretary

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said: "Dealing with rising numbers of older people in need of care is a challenge across the NHS, and the infrastructure of the service must reflect that need.

"It is vital that the named clinicians in this role have the capacity and the organisational support to join up services so that patients experience a seamless journey from home to hospital and back again."

And Jeremy Hughes, chief executive of the Alzheimer's Society, said: "Having a named clinician responsible for the care of vulnerable individuals has the potential to transform the experience people with dementia have of health and social care.

"However, it's crucial that the doctors and nurses who are assigned are accessible, understand dementia and how to provide the best care for people with the condition."

Digital records

The health secretary also launched a new organisation, Genomics England, to map the DNA of 100,000 patients with cancer and rare diseases.

Mr Hunt said: "If we really want this to be the century of personalised care, then we must radically improve our understanding of disease and how to design treatments better tailored to individual patients.

"Combine the information from genomes with the information in digital medical records - all done with proper consent - and you have the most remarkable treasure trove about the make-up of diseases with huge clues as to how to treat them."

Shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said the NHS anniversary was being overshadowed by "a real sense of worry about where the NHS is heading under David Cameron".

"Patients and staff have precious little faith that the NHS is safe in this government's hands," he said.

"Cameron's reorganisation has put the NHS on the wrong path - a fast-track to fragmentation and privatisation."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

New virus 'not yet global threat'

4 July 2013 Last updated at 20:40 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

The deadly coronavirus that emerged last year does not currently appear to be infectious enough to pose a global threat, researchers say.

Their analysis of 55 cases of Middle East respiratory-syndrome coronavirus, published in the Lancet, indicated the virus struggled to spread in people.

But the virus may be mutating, which means it could become a much greater threat.

It is similar to viruses that cause Sars and the common cold.

So far there have been 77 confirmed cases and 41 deaths. Most infections come from an unidentified animal source, but there have been cases in which the virus has spread between people.

On Friday it was revealed that the World Health Organization has convened a telephone conference of its International Health Relations Emergency Committee next week.

The committee has only met once before ,during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.

It said the meeting was a proactive approach, rather than a sign the situation was escalating.

Going global?

The team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris tried to calculate the average number of people each infected person passed the virus on to - what is known as a "basic reproduction value".

Continue reading the main story

My concern is that people read this and not worry about it, but the opposite is true. This is the perfect time to identify the animal host and stop it"

End Quote Prof Arnaud Fontanet Pasteur Institute

A high value means the number of cases can increase rapidly and potentially spread around the world, but a number less than one would mean the virus was destined to fade away.

The study indicated each patient would, on average, infect 0.69 others. So three infected patients would pass the virus on to just two people.

Prof Arnaud Fontanet told the BBC: "The virus as it currently stands is not able to start an epidemic.

"My concern is that people read this and not worry about it, but the opposite is true. This is the perfect time to identify the animal host and stop it."

In the early stages of Sars in late 2002 it had a basic reproduction value of 0.8, but eventually the virus mutated and could spread more easily.

"Sars' adaption to humans took just several months, whereas Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus has already been circulating more than a year in human populations without mutating into a pandemic form," Prof Arnaud Fontanet added.

There have been cases in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Additional cases in France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and the UK were linked to travel to the Middle East.

On Thursday, the death of a patient in the UK was announced. He had been treated for kidney failure and severe breathing difficulties since being flown in from Qatar in September.

Dr Benjamin Neuman, from the University of Reading, said: "The authors have done their best to predict how Middle East respiratory syndrome will spread based on the few cases that we know about, and found that the virus appears to be slowly dying out.

"But other work has shown that the virus is changing, and that change makes it difficult to predict the future of Middle East respiratory syndrome.

"What most concerns me is that people are still becoming infected from an unknown source."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

Surgeon death data 'not robust'

4 July 2013 Last updated at 20:40 ET

Publishing death rates for individual surgeons will not spot poor performers in certain fields because too few operations take place, a study finds,

In June, the NHS in England published the first data, including death rates, for vascular surgeons, with nine more specialist areas to follow.

But the paper says it would be better if some data was shown per hospital.

NHS England said the reason for the initiative was transparency - not to try to spot poorly performing doctors.

'Statistically reliable?'

The team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine used hospital data from England to look at death rates in four specialist areas,

These were adult heart surgery, bowel cancer resection (removing part of the colon or rectum), oesophagectomy (removing the oesophagus) and gastrectomy (taking out all or part of the stomach), and hip fracture surgery.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

Results for individual surgeons should be based on outcomes that are fairly frequent, and fortunately, mortality is not one of them "

End Quote Dr Jenny Neuburger, Study author

They then assessed how many procedures would be necessary for reliable detection of poor performance, and how many surgeons in English NHS hospitals actually do that number of operations.

The researchers concluded enough heart and hip operations were carried out to make death rate data statistically reliable.

But they suggest the same is not true for the other categories they studied.

For example, the median number of bowel cancer resections carried out by an individual surgeon was nine - meaning the number was too small and too easily affected by a range of other factors, such as one surgeon doing more complex operations than their peers on sicker patients.

In addition, death rates after hip surgery are extremely low and so would not give a fair reflection of the procedure's success.

The researchers suggest post-operative quality of life might be a better measure for this specialty.

Other factors

They conclude that in many areas, individual performance data would not be robust - and may give a false sense of complacency because "an absence of evidence could be falsely interpreted as evidence of acceptable performance".

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

I have discovered that the few surgeons with the worst apparent records are to be flagged as an 'alert' and their work will be reviewed"

End Quote

Dr Jenny Neuburger, who led the research, said: "The reporting of results for individual surgeons should be based on outcomes that are fairly frequent, and fortunately, from the point of view of patients, mortality is not one of them.

"For specialties in which most surgeons do not perform sufficient numbers of operations to reliably assess their outcomes, reporting should be at the level of the surgical team or hospital, and not the surgeon."

Prof Jan van der Meulen, who also worked on the paper, said there should be as much transparency as possible.

But he said: "It's not just the surgeon who has an impact - it's the whole care package, the whole team, the pre and post-operative care."

Prof Norman Williams, president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said: "The driving force behind the publication of surgeon-level outcomes data is to improve surgical performance and allow patients to find out more about the quality of care provided by hospitals and individual surgeons."

He said it was "an extremely challenging project" and particularly complex for cancer operations where there were "low volumes of surgery".

But Prof Williams said: "This is the beginning of a new approach to transparency in healthcare.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

Auditing some areas of surgery is undeniably easier than others"

End Quote Prof Norman Williams Royal College of Surgeons

"Auditing some areas of surgery is undeniably easier than others.

"This is by no means a reason not to measure outcome as long as the complexities are understood and interpreted correctly - and the profession is committed to doing so, no matter how difficult it may be."

And Prof Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director at NHS England, said: "The authors have misunderstood the purpose of public disclosure of information.

"It is not a statistical exercise to identify poor performers. Rather it is an exercise to provide information on activity and outcomes, to focus minds on improving results and to assure the public that the NHS offers high quality surgery.

"But it does raise the question as to whether it is better to have your complex operation performed by a surgeon doing a lot of that operation or only a few."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More

New virus 'not yet global threat'

4 July 2013 Last updated at 20:40 ET By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News

The deadly coronavirus that emerged last year does not currently appear to be infectious enough to pose a global threat, researchers say.

Their analysis of 55 cases of Middle East respiratory-syndrome coronavirus, published in the Lancet, indicated the virus struggled to spread in people.

But the virus may be mutating, which means it could become a much greater threat.

It is similar to viruses that cause Sars and the common cold.

So far there have been 77 confirmed cases and 41 deaths. Most infections come from an unidentified animal source, but there have been cases in which the virus has spread between people.

On Friday it was revealed that the World Health Organization has convened a telephone conference of its International Health Relations Emergency Committee next week.

The committee has only met once before ,during the 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak.

It said the meeting was a proactive approach, rather than a sign the situation was escalating.

Going global?

The team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris tried to calculate the average number of people each infected person passed the virus on to - what is known as a "basic reproduction value".

Continue reading the main story

My concern is that people read this and not worry about it, but the opposite is true. This is the perfect time to identify the animal host and stop it"

End Quote Prof Arnaud Fontanet Pasteur Institute

A high value means the number of cases can increase rapidly and potentially spread around the world, but a number less than one would mean the virus was destined to fade away.

The study indicated each patient would, on average, infect 0.69 others. So three infected patients would pass the virus on to just two people.

Prof Arnaud Fontanet told the BBC: "The virus as it currently stands is not able to start an epidemic.

"My concern is that people read this and not worry about it, but the opposite is true. This is the perfect time to identify the animal host and stop it."

In the early stages of Sars in late 2002 it had a basic reproduction value of 0.8, but eventually the virus mutated and could spread more easily.

"Sars' adaption to humans took just several months, whereas Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus has already been circulating more than a year in human populations without mutating into a pandemic form," Prof Arnaud Fontanet added.

There have been cases in Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Additional cases in France, Germany, Italy, Tunisia and the UK were linked to travel to the Middle East.

On Thursday, the death of a patient in the UK was announced. He had been treated for kidney failure and severe breathing difficulties since being flown in from Qatar in September.

Dr Benjamin Neuman, from the University of Reading, said: "The authors have done their best to predict how Middle East respiratory syndrome will spread based on the few cases that we know about, and found that the virus appears to be slowly dying out.

"But other work has shown that the virus is changing, and that change makes it difficult to predict the future of Middle East respiratory syndrome.

"What most concerns me is that people are still becoming infected from an unknown source."

21.24 | 0 komentar | Read More