SARS - Pandemia and emerging disease

Abstract

The SARS-epidemic of 2002/2003 with worldwide 8.096 cases and 774 fatalities was the first pandemia of the 21st century. SARS, the severe acute respiratory syndrome, arose in southern China and spread from Southeast-Asia finally over all five continents. It caused heavy pneumonia with pulmonal failure and enteric involvement in man. The causative agent was a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which was transmitted from bats to small carnivores and from them to man. The mutations of the viral receptor gene thus allowed the infection of man and the transmission from man to man. The SARS-pandemia can therefore be regarded as a model of an emerging disease. © 2008 Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel.