SARS: Just another viral acronym?

Recent observations and experimental evidence have purported that a virus causes SARS, but such viruses have been isolated in only less than half of SARS patients in some studies and virologist Vincent Plummer of Winnipeg’s National Microbiology Laboratory found that indeed 1 in 5 perfectly healthy Canadians with a history of recent travel to Asia had the virus. Therfore SARS microbiologic origins remain unclear. Outbreaks of multi-drug resistant (MDR) tuberculosis and the atypical mycobacteria simulate SARS on clinical, radiologic, epidemiologic, and diagnostic laboratory grounds and it is only logical then to include them in the differential to find a definitive cause and cure for SARS.