Lancet
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Multicenter Study
A multicentre collaboration to investigate the cause of severe acute respiratory syndrome.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome is a new disease in human beings, first recognised in late February, 2003, in Hanoi, Vietnam. The severity of the disease, combined with its rapid spread along international air-travel routes, prompted WHO to set up a network of scientists from 11 laboratories around the world to try to identify the causal agent and develop a diagnostic test. The network unites laboratories with different methods and capacities to rapidly fulfil all postulates for establishing a virus as the cause of a disease. ⋯ Progress is further facilitated through sharing between laboratories of samples and test materials. The network has identified a new coronavirus, consistently detected in samples of SARS patients from several countries, and conclusively named it as the causative agent of SARS; the strain is unlike any other known member of the genus Coronavirus. Three diagnostic tests are now available, but all have limitations.