GENEVA, Switzerland, March 21 (UPI) -- World Health Organization officials said Friday they may have isolated the infectious agent responsible for the global SARS outbreak.
"We may have grown, but are not sure, the infectious agent that causes the disease," WHO spokesman Dick Thompson told United Press International.
Researchers "have grown in cell cultures an infectious agent but we don't know exactly what it is," Thompson said.
The agent might be a new member of the paramyxoviridae family of viruses, which includes diseases such as mumps and measles, he said. However, it also might be something that looks like a paramyxo virus, he noted.
Further experiments seemed to confirm the researchers had isolated the culprit responsible for the SARS outbreak that has infected as many as 350 people worldwide and killed 10.
Researchers exposed the agent to blood from recovering patients and found the agent died, indicating the patients had developed antibodies to it. Blood from healthy people did not kill the agent.
WHO officials are still conducting additional tests to conclusively identify the pathogen, Thompson said.
"This is just another step down the road but it's a good step," he said. "It may mean we could soon develop a diagnostic test and that would be a huge step forward."
Authorities still are trying to determine which treatments are most effective against the agent. "It's a confused picture still but we are trying to straighten out," Thompson said.
