Okay, virology is NOT something I know much about but I've read the
article in "Nature".
 
I am truly wondering if there may not be a different mustelid-specific
coronavirus (Epizooic Catarrheal Enteritis) confusing the second stage of
the experiment in relation to ferrets, especially given the liver
findings in those ferrets.
 
BTW, the article itself does NOT refer to ferrets as wild animals, though
Mary said she saw that in the abstract.  I wonder who wrote the abstract?
I'm glad that error was not in the article itself.  You'd think that
researchers would know that their test species has been domesticated
for over 2,500 years and mentioned in the writings of people like
Aristophanes and Pliny, so I suspect someone else did the abstract for
them.
 
Okay: If I am processing this properly what they did was they performed
4 intratracheal innoculations of 10 to the 6th median tissue culture
infectous dose units and did that four times for each individual.  The
tissue was obtained from a human who died of SARS.
 
Then they took swabs from the pharynx, nose, and rectum of the animals
directly infected, starting at Day 2 and ending at Day 10 for cats and
Day 14 for ferrets.
 
All of the animals had positive results from pharyngyl swabs.  None had
positive results from rectal swabs.  Two cats had positive nasal swabs
whereas the ferrets never had positive nasal swabs.
 
One of these ferrets died (but see note on the deaths to two later
ferrets because something else may have been going on, too).  The titers
done from lungs of the ferrets were lower than those seen in infected
macaques and lesions were milder.  The infection was even less pronounced
in the cats.
 
There was also some evidence of SCV in the gastrointestinal and urinary
tracts on necropsy.
 
The results of the swabs showed that the amount of virus increased until
Days 6 to 8, and then decreased.  All of the animals who were left alive
had seroconverted by Day 28 and nothing infectious was found in them at
that point.  Cats had virus-neutralizing titers of 40 and ferrets had
ones of 160.
 
Now the tricky part: there are experts at WHO and the CDC (quoted in news
articles) who say that the exposure that they did of non-innoculated cats
and ferrets just was not done with methodolgy which lets anyone be sure
that cats or ferrets can transmit the virus.
 
*****Two exposed ferrets died, BUT on necropsy they did NOT have SARS
like lung damage and only one of them had any coronavirus found in lung
tissue.  (Lesions had been seen on the necropsied directly-infected
ferrets.) INSTEAD, they had hepatic lipidosis and emaciation.  So, were
these ferrets not eating and run down badly?  As we all know from reading
the article on confusion in pathology of ferrets in Dr. Bruce William's
AFIP site that may be a real concern here.  Were they using ferrets who
were already ill or were refusing food?  (I would LOVE to know if these
ferrets had diarrhea, and if the researchers have testing abilities in
their labs which can distinguish between the ECE coronavirus and the SARS
coronavirus, especially with recent reports of people who are wondering
if some Dutch pet ferrets have ECE.) Are they aware that there is a
mustelid-specific coronavirus which may be present in ferrets in Holland
and which is present in ferrets in North America.  have they made sure
that they are not possibly dealing with that instead?  (See the extensive
many years of work of Doctors Bruce Williams of the Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology and Matti Kiupel now of the Pathology Dept.  of
University of Michigan and previously of Purdue.)*****
 
The researchers, who are at the Institute of Virology, Erasmus Medical
Center, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands are Doctors Martina, Haagmans,
Kuiken, Fouchier, Rimmelzwaan, Amerongen, Peiris, Lim, and Osterhaus
[Posted in FML issue 4317]