Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS is an acute respiratory infection that affects the lower respiratory tract causing high fever, weakness, cough, shortness of breath and other related symptoms. Death rate is fairly low in case of young and healthy people (around 1 percent) but as the age goes further, the chances of death are considerably high. But it is lower than other respiratory diseases like pneumonia.

SARS became an epidemic in 2002 and 2003 in several countries of Asia and other parts of the world. Several precautionary steps were taken at the airports and tourist places to prevent it from spreading further. SARS is a highly infectious disease caused by a specific strain of virus known as SARS corona virus. In 2004, Chinese scientists claimed the invention of workable vaccines that can help prevent the infection.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome infection takes a long period to recover and the patient may suffer from its typical symptoms for several weeks. The patients are strictly quarantined and are kept in isolation for some time even after they fully recover from the infection.

There are no medications discovered for this disease and this makes it a highly dreaded infection. Once caught, the patient is bound to suffer for weeks. The affect of antibiotics or antiviral medications in relieving the symptoms has not been sufficiently established. The patient is mostly treated with medication for pain and general fever. SARS is spread through air and physical contact. It can cause serious complications in elderly and weak victims. To know more about SARS, simply browse through Severeacuterespiratorysyndrome.net.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 5:24 am and is filed under General Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.