Chinese scientists Wednesday said that a man initially thought to have SARS actually died of bird flu in 2003 -- two years before the country reported any human bird-flu infections to the World Health Organization. But the scientists now want to withdraw their report to a leading medical journal.

WHO was surprised by the report, which came from eight scientists and not the Chinese government. The findings were printed Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. At the last minute, however, at least one of the Chinese scientists e-mailed the journal Wednesday morning, requesting that the report be withdrawn. Journal editors were waiting to see whether the authors would now retract the paper, according to the Associated Press.

The confusion surrounding the man's death in Beijing raises the possibility that other cases in China already attributed to SARS may have actually been the deadly H5N1 flu. "It's hard to believe that this is the only person in all of China who developed H5N1" that year, Dr. John Treanor, a flu expert at the University of Rochester, told the news service.

A WHO spokesman in China said the agency would formally request that the Chinese Ministry of Health clarify the report and explain why it took more than two years to uncover the finding. Attempts to reach the Chinese scientists for comment were unsuccessful, the AP reported.

China didn't report its first human cases of bird flu outside Hong Kong until 2005. Eight infections and five deaths were recorded that year, and this year the government has reported at least 10 infections and seven deaths. The SARS outbreak in China began in November 2002, but was not recognized until the following spring. More than 1,450 cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome were confirmed, the vast majority in Asia. Many cases were diagnosed based on symptoms, which are similar to those of bird flu, and not lab tests.

During the SARS outbreak, some public-health experts questioned whether the Chinese government was being candid about the extent of the crisis.

The New England Journal of Medicine report raised the possibility that the two dangerous viruses emerged simultaneously. The newly disclosed case in Beijing means "there may be more jumps from birds to people than we realized," a journal editor told AP.

Meanwhile, WHO experts said that human-to-human transmission likely occurred among seven of eight relatives who developed bird flu and died last month in Indonesia, according to a report obtained Wednesday by AP.

The experts said the cluster's index case was probably infected by sick birds and spread the disease to six family members. One of those cases, a boy, then likely infected his father.

The report was distributed during a closed meeting at a three-day conference in Jakarta, convened after Indonesia asked for international help. Indonesia has confirmed 51 cases of bird flu this year, and 39 have been fatal, according to AP.

Copyright © 2006 ScoutNews LLC. All rights reserved.
HealthDayNews articles are derived from various sources and do not reflect federal policy. healthfinder® does not endorse opinions, products, or services that may appear in news stories. For more information on health topics in the news, visit the healthfinder® health library.


http://www.healthfinder.gov/news/newsstory.asp?Docid=533418