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WHO says mysterious illness in China likely being caused by new virus – STAT

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The World Health Organization confirmed on Wednesday that Chinese authorities believe a new coronavirus — from the family that produced SARS and MERS — may be the cause of mysterious pneumonia cases in the city of Wuhan.

The Chinese government has not yet publicly stated that a coronavirus is the cause of the illness, which has infected at least 59 people. But the Wall Street Journal reported that was the case earlier Wednesday, citing unnamed sources.

“Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that range from the common cold to SARS. Some cause less-severe disease, some more severe. Some transmit easily from person to person, while others don’t,” the WHO statement said.

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The virus can cause severe illness in some patients, the agency said, adding that it does not “transmit readily” between people. Earlier statements from the Wuhan Municipal Health Authority said there has been no person-to-person spread — a claim disease experts say is impossible to make at this stage in the exploration of a new disease.

“I don’t know how you know that at all,” said Matthew Frieman, a coronavirus expert at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He noted the number of cases reported makes it seem unlikely that animal-to-human transmission is the only way this virus spread.

The WHO said that as authorities home in on the cause — and develop better detection tools — the number of cases associated with this outbreak may rise.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sent out an alert to health care providers — a Health Alert Network or HAN — notifying them of the outbreak and urging them to ask patients with severe respiratory infections if they had traveled recently to Wuhan, which is 700 miles south of Beijing.

The fact that a coronavirus may be responsible will come as no surprise to the infectious diseases experts who have been watching the situation unfold. The type of illness and the fact that it is emerging in China — where a number of SARS-like and other coronaviruses have been isolated from bats — has pointed in that direction.

Experts said it will now be important for China to share more information, including enough of a genetic sequence so that health facilities outside of China know what to look for when faced with a pneumonia case with a recent travel history to Wuhan.

As it currently stands, Hong Kong is isolating any such cases until they can be tested for influenza, rhinoviruses, and other viruses that cause colds and flu. Given it is flu season in the Northern Hemisphere, telling countries to be on the look out for travelers with fevers and cold-like symptoms casts a very broad net.

“It really behooves them to at least provide enough information to allow the global community to be ready to do testing,” said Ralph Baric, a coronavirus expert at the University of North Caroline. “Otherwise you’re just doing screening for fever — in the middle of respiratory disease season? Financial nightmare.”

It will also be critical to figure out how the virus transmitted to people. The outbreak has been linked to a large seafood market that also sells live exotic animals for consumption. The market was closed and decontaminated on Jan. 1.

Baric said investigations will be underway to identify which species — singular or plural — was infected in the market.

“Understanding the reservoir is critical for eliminating that whole aspect of animal-to-human jump,” Frieman said.

Identifying the reservoir of the virus will also require tracing the animals suspected of being infected back to their suppliers so that it can be determined whether other markets might also have received infected animals.

During the 2003 SARS outbreak — in which more than 8,000 people were infected and nearly 800 died — the source of the virus was traced to palm civets that are eaten as a delicacy in parts of China. The Chinese government ordered a mass culling of the animals as part of its effort to stop the outbreak.

News of the pneumonia cases first emerged on Dec. 30, when the local health authority told hospitals to be on the lookout for cases. The next day Chinese authorities informed the WHO that they were dealing with what looked like an outbreak caused by an unknown virus.

In its most recent update, the Wuhan Municipal Health Authority said there had been 59 cases, seven of which were in critical condition. The statement said the first known case began showing signs of illness on Dec. 12 and the last case of illness onset was Dec. 29.

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Whooping cough is at a decade-high level in US

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MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.

There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.

The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.

Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.

Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.

Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.

“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.

Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.

But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.

That includes his own teenage daughter.

“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.

It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.

“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”

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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.

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Scientists show how sperm and egg come together like a key in a lock

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How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.

New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.

“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.

Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.

It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.

Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.

Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.

The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.

The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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