New AIDS-like Disease Emerges As Ebola Ravages Uganda, DR Congo

THEY are two of a kind. But they are ravaging humans at different parts of the world. A new Human Immuno-deficiency Virus (HIV)/Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-like disease and Ebola haemorrhagic fever are on the prowl.  While bushmeat is being blamed for the latter, no one is sure of the source of the former.

Indeed, outbreaks of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Uganda and Democratic Republic of Congo has led to deaths of at least 27 persons and maimed others, while researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States of America with AIDS-like symptoms, even though they are not infected with HIV.

According to the study on new AIDS-like disease published Thursday in New England Journal of Medicine, the patients’ immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this is not known, but the disease does not seem to be contagious.

A scientist at the United States National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Sarah Browne, said this is another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited, occurs in adults, but does not spread the way AIDS does through a virus.

Browne said the disease develops around age 50 on average but does not run in families, which makes it unlikely that a single gene is responsible.  Alhough some patients, including some Asians living in the US, have died of overwhelming infections, Browne could not estimate how many.

Meanwhile, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO), at least 10 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North-Eastern Orientale Province and 17 from Uganda had died from suspected Ebola as at August 20.  The first reported outbreak in DR Congo was on August 17. While an outbreak in Uganda’s Kibaale district, about 220 km west of the capital Kampala, in July/August 2012 has affected the lives of many.

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