Vol. 38, No. 18

4-7-2004
By: By Mauricio Espinoza

OARDC lab joins worldwide network studying SARS

An Ohio State agricultural lab has joined an international network of research facilities created by the World Health Organization (WHO) to study and monitor deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the coronavirus that causes it.

The Food Animal Health Research Program (FAHRP) — part of the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center’s (OARDC) Wooster campus — was invited to become a member of the WHO International SARS Reference and Verification Laboratory Network Jan. 22.

FAHRP chair and professor Mo Saif said the university will share with WHO its experience researching and diagnosing animal coronaviruses, which may provide valuable insight into the novel human pathogen that infected 8,422 people worldwide between November 2002 and July 2003, killing 916.

“FAHRP will be the reference laboratory for animal coronaviruses in this network,” Saif said. “Before SARS emerged, scientists hadn’t paid much attention to human coronaviruses, since they caused nothing more than the common cold. As a result, most of the knowledge about coronaviruses in general was generated by animal coronavirologists in facilities such as ours.”

The Ohio State facility is one of three U.S. labs playing a part in the network, which has a total of 18 members. The other two participants from the United States are the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Respiratory Virus Section and Columbia University’s Jerome L. and Dawn Green Infectious Disease Laboratory.

Leading OARDC’s role in the SARS network is FAHRP virologist Linda Saif, an internationally renowned expert in coronaviruses and other pathogens that sicken food-producing animals and people, including rotaviruses and caliciviruses. During the past year, Saif has collaborated with CDC and WHO in SARS-related research.

Linda Saif also participated in a laboratory workshop held last October at WHO’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. It was this workshop that recommended the creation of a SARS lab network to undertake confirmatory diagnostic tests on behalf of the international community.

“As SARS appears to be a zoonotic virus, it is essential that the network include laboratories with expertise and experience with animal coronaviruses,” Guenael Rodier, director of WHO’s Department of Communicable Disease Surveillance and Response, wrote in a letter to OARDC Director Steve Slack. “Dr. Linda Saif was a major contributor to the laboratory workshop, and we would (be) most grateful if you would allow her to provide advice to the network.”

Rodier indicated that while it remains uncertain whether SARS will indeed return, there is growing concern that the health care sector could have a hard time trying to distinguish between SARS and other respiratory diseases such as influenza. That’s where the SARS network will come into play.

“Dr. Saif is an outstanding scientist and we are pleased that she was a major contributor to the laboratory workshop in Geneva and are very supportive of her continuing to provide advice to the network,” Slack said. “OARDC administration is cognizant of how important continuing research on this zoonotic virus is to the entire world and are pleased to help in any way we can.”

The SARS coronavirus is suspected to have jumped from wild animals in southern China to humans. However, more research is needed before conclusions can be reached about an animal reservoir of the virus, the role of interspecies transmission in the origins of SARS, and the risk of repeated introduction of the pathogen from animals to human beings.
FAHRP will be providing network participants with reagents — including antisera and monoclonal antibodies — to the porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) and the bovine coronavirus (BCV). Linda Saif’s lab is recognized worldwide for the development of diagnostic tests and vaccines for these viruses, which cause high mortality and morbidity in pigs and cattle.

Of special interest to scientists working with SARS is the connection between the bovine and the SARS coronaviruses. Last year, Linda Saif reported that the pneumonia associated with BCV is similar to the pneumonia experienced by some SARS patients. Moreover, she said some people who caught SARS developed gastroenteritis in addition to respiratory disease, which is the case with BCV-infected cattle stressed by transport to feedlots — a condition called shipping fever disease.

An Ohio State Distinguished University Professor, Linda Saif has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2003.
OARDC is the research arm of Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences.

onCampus Home