(none)

[bhjelle at unm.edu]

In article <Pine.3.88.9505161130.B12672-0100000 at labsun1.med.uottawa.ca>,
>
>
>
>To the person who was concerned about the Baltimore strain of hantavirus: 
>	This virus was isolated several years ago from rats, and has not 
>be strongly associated with any human disease - the virus currently 

The nearly identical Seoul virus of China causes a fair
amount of morbidity and mortality every year. You are right
that finding disease in North America was more difficult, but
Greg Glass and colleagues did succeed in identifying a few
Baltimoreans with acute (mild) hemorrhagic fever with renal
syndrome, and reported it in Nephron in 1994. There is really
no reason to believe that the Baltimore version is less
virulent than the Chinese version (they have nearly the
same nucleotide sequence), but for some reason there are
less cases in N. America.

Brian