PLA Daily 2003-06-20

　　No.302 Hospital made important progress on SARS pathogeny diagnosis. The project group, headed by Wang Haibin, the deputy director of the clinical test center, has succeeded in finding a comparatively more sensitive SARS diagnostic method---coronavirus RNA quantitative Fluorescence PCR diagnosis. With repeated tests, the new method can find coronavirus from the plasma and lymphocyte of a SARS patient on the day when he falls ill, and the rate of positive reaction in test is 80.9% for SARS patients who have fallen ill for less than one week.

　　According to the experts, in the development of the diagnosis indicator of variable virus nucleic acid, the design of retro-gene consequence plays a critical role. With this in mind, the group developed the quantitative fluorescence PRC diagnostic method. According to the test result of plasma or lymphocyte from 96 SARS patients, the positive rate is 64.6%, of which positive rate for a SARS patient who has been ill for less than a week is 80.9%, including 5 cases that were found coronavirus at the very beginning of the attack of the disease. The researchers also found that the positive test rate to lymphocyte is higher than that to plasma, which means lymphocyte may be a major carrier for the self-duplication of coronavirus.　This discovery is of great significance for the establishment of the prevention of SARS and long-term follow-up research on SARS.

　　By Hang Xianbin and Tang Mingshan

　　（June 20, PLA Daily）