The second part of the series, to appear in the July 25 issue, discusses researchers' ongoing efforts to forestall further outbreaks of hantavirus-related infections.
A lethal killer, untimely death, and hardworking detectives- -all of these were ingredients in the mystery surrounding last year's sudden outbreak of a deadly strain of hantavirus new to science and North America. But more intriguing, say researchers, is the other hantavirus story--the galvanization of seemingly disparate lines of research to solve, in a matter of weeks, one of the United States' most deadly epidemiological enigmas.
Between May and June of last year, physicians and public health specialists confirmed that 13 people--several of them members of the Navajo Nation--had died of a mysterious disease characterized by flu-like symptoms that quickly deteriorated into a dangerous form of adult respiratory distress syndrome. No one had ever seen this pathology before--but, thanks to the sharp investigative work of a ...
