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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 17, 2002)
4AI January 17,. Sd iTech THE BATTALION 5A Thursday, January 17, 2002 Rare African virus coming to Texas begins at the Danny the stage AD perform p.m. By Mandi Vest THE BATTALION I A new virus could be on its way to Texas. West Nile encephalitis, a ■inis that affects birds, horses and ■umans and can be fatal, is expected m> hit this area soon. Veterinarians Be watching for signs of its arrival. I This fatal bird disease originated ii Uganda along the West Nile, ■vidence points to New York’s John H. Kennedy Airport as the point of entry for the virus to the United Btates, said Dr. Ian Tizard, profes sor of exotic bird health and immunology at Texas A&M’s College of Veterinary Medicine. The discovery was made when 70 birds at a zoo in the Bronx were found dead. A New York lab first suspected the culprit to be St. Louis encephalitis but later found the virus to be a West Nile strain. Tizard said the virus is spread by mosquitoes and usually affects larger birds, especially crows and related species. But it can be spread to horses and humans. The only humans who have been adversely affected by the virus were more than 70 years old. Only nine people were killed in the New York and New Jersey areas by the disease. But many people were studied and showed signs of infec tion without symptoms. West Nile has been found along the Eastern coast in Maine, Michigan, Florida and Louisiana. Tizard said it is making its way along the Gulf Coast. The virus spreads along water sources where mosquitoes thrive. The recent find ings in Louisiana are what have Texas veterinarians on alert. East Texas and along the Gulf Coast are prime targets for West Nile, he said. Birds have been the most hit by West Nile, and Tizard said that should be the focus of concern. “My concern is what it will do to the wild bird population,”he said. If several dead birds are found in an area, it could be that West Nile has arrived. It is not likely though that this virus could wipe out the bird population on A&M’s campus, Tizard said, because the disease is not spread from bird to bird. Officials suggest contacting the Texas Department of Health or the Texas Animal Health Commission if something suspicious is found. . Tizard said the disease can be fatal to horses and possibly other animals. The Vet School is stocked with the West Nile vaccine for horses if the problem arises. Irreemies show better behavior Satellite Schneider at 9 p.m. set to play m. Cost is I (AP) - Very small premature babies born ■i the late 1970s turned out less intelligent than other youngsters their age, a study found. But to researchers’ surprise, they got jito less trouble as teens, perhaps because | they had doting parents. I As expected, the preemies in the study had pleaming difficulties and persistent neurologi cal problems while growing up. But they also ^ftported significantly less risky behavior as I young adults than a comparison group. 1 Differences between the groups were found ■ when it came to the use of alcohol, marijuana land other illegal drugs; conviction of a crime or i^Bher contact with police; and. for girls, having fHx and getting pregnant by age 20. I “That was totally unexpected, because j^Bere’s a lot of literature that criminality is ■ Blated to lower IQ,” said Dr. Maureen Hack, the Stage | who led the study as director of the neonatal I follow-up program at Rainbow Babies and ■ Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. She said the I researchers thought the preemies would have 1 had more behavior problems. I She said one possible explanatipn is that the — — pfeemies’ parents saw their children as particu- firly precious and watched over them more. Dr. Henry Shapiro, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ section on nk developmental pediatrics, said there is no evi dence that the hypothesis is correct. But he said the study could help policymakers better plan for the medical and educational needs of pre mature babies. Infants of very low birth weight, 3.3 pounds or less, account for 1 percent of all U.S. births, or about 40,000 babies per year. The babies in the study were bom at 29 weeks and just over 2 1/2 pounds on average. They were born between 1977 and 1979, before neonatal intensive care units and special ized technology were widely used to keep tiny preemies alive. Today, lung treatments, breathing machines, intravenous feeding and other technol ogy enable some preemies as small as a pound to survive, though with significant disabilities. Hack said her findings would probably apply to many of today’s premature infants. Past research on premature babies found high er rates of learning disabilities such as attention deficit disorder and of neurological problems such as cerebral palsy, blindness and deafness. Earlier studies generally followed children until school age. This study followed the preemies until age 20 and examined their physical growth, behavior and mental health as well as intelligence. The research was reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine. Preemies fare well as teen-agers A study found that babies born prematurely were less likely to engage in risky behavior during adolescence than their counterparts of normal birth weight. The preemies, all born from 1977 through 1979, had more learning and neurological problems but fewer behavioral problems overall. Percentage of 20 year olds reporting risk behavior H Low birth weight Q Normal birth weight Men Women Tobacco use l 59 i 48 1 A Ieoh ol use ■£■■■■■■■ 7? ■■■■■■■_ | 83 1 Illicit drug use ■■■■30 53 1 44 Violation of law (excluding tratlic tickets) mwBM* 7 ^^■24 ' 52 1 23 1 Crime conviction (includes driving while intoxicated) H 1 1 * • 27 | t 3 | Incarc e ration ■ ' 1 26 - | 1 6 Pregnancy (ior men. pregnancy oi partner) ^■^■29 23 i- • 41 | SOURCE. New England Journal of Medicine AIDS vaccine monkey dies (AP) - In a study that illustrates how cunning a foe AIDS is, a monkey that was given an experimental AIDS vaccine died after the virus changed just one of its genes. HIV, which causes AIDS, already is known to mutate and grow impervious to standard AIDS drugs in at least half of all Americans being treated for the infection. Now researchers have seen a similar outcome with an experimental vaccine that tries to stop the virus from multiply ing. The mutation occurred in one of eight vaccinated rhesus monkeys in a Harvard experiment. The findings were published in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Scientists who reviewed the results described the monkey’s death as “more disappointing than surprising.” It does not mean that AIDS vaccines are doomed to fail, they said, but illustrates how the virus will not be easily defeated or even contained anytime soon. “It is sobering to find that a single point mutation within the virus can initi ate a cascade of events resulting in a clinical vaccine failure and death,” said Dan H. Barouch, a clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study. More than one dozen experimental vaccines using different genetic strate gies have been tested in various laborato ries. Some have been successful for more than two years. Unlike a flu shot, AIDS vaccines do not actually prevent infection by the invading virus. That is because HIV comes in many strains and changes rapidly. 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