ProMED weighs in on Peruvian deaths
Scott McPherson
Post a Comment
I got my usual ProMED alerts in today's email, and I was particularly interested in the update on the Peruvian situation. You can read about it by scrolling down and reading my fifth installment in the series "It's not always influenza that kills."
Anyway, here is an extract from the ProMED report that I found quite interesting:
Of course, now we know that Ad14 has been associated with severe disease, even death -- a CFR that is alarming. The world awaits the results of tests to determine if Ad14 was the culprit.Given the long time since the vessel left China, the disease was mostb likely introduced by one of the new crew members who went aboard in March 2008 (we are not told whether the fatal cases were those same 2). The adenovirus type is not stated, but the ProMED reader who contributed this report has suggested that it could be type 14, which has a 20 percent mortality rate -- see ProMED post Adenovirus 14-associated pneumonia - USA (OR) 20071010.3334. I quote Mod CP's comment on that report: "Human adenovirus 14 has not previously been regularly associated with human respiratory disease. It is perhaps too soon to designate human adenovirus 14-associated pneumonia as an emerging disease rather than perhaps a co-factor in an unusual disease situation."
Reader Comments