waldwolf

A Medical Mystery Man Bounces Back From Avian Flu

By KEITH BRADSHER

HANOI, Vietnam

IT started as a mild fever and severe chills on Jan. 9 that made Nguyen Thanh Hung's teeth chatter even when his wife, a nurse, covered him with blankets.

But within two days, as the avian influenza virus took hold, his temperature soared to 106.7 degrees and peaked close to that level every day for the next five days as he struggled for life in one of this city's best hospitals. Most of his right lung collapsed, every joint ached and the far wall of his hospital room seemed to approach and recede before his eyes.

"My whole skull hurt," he said, gripping his temples for emphasis. "It felt like pieces of my skull were detaching."

What happened next is one of two medical mysteries in Mr. Hung's case that have caught the attention of flu experts as they try to decipher whether his illness will come to afflict millions of people, and possibly hundreds of millions, around the world.

Unlike most people with confirmed cases of bird flu, Mr. Hung survived, for reasons that remain unclear but may have to do with his extraordinary physical fitness. The greater mystery is how he caught the disease, with strong evidence that he acquired it from his older brother, not from poultry, in a worrisome sign that the virus may be developing the ability to pass from person to person.

The World Health Organization has confirmed 14 cases of avian influenza in Vietnam this winter. Thirteen have died. Mr. Hung, 42, is the 14th case. Three weeks after he fell sick, he is already home from the hospital, tending his beloved bonsai trees, strumming his guitar and jogging a remarkable 14 miles a day.

International flu experts fear what could happen if the A(H5N1) avian influenza virus now circulating here were to recombine with human influenza to produce a virus capable of passing easily from person to person, causing a global pandemic.

Nobody knows when or even if the disease will evolve the ability to pass easily from person to person. If it does, researchers say they expect it to lose some of its deadliness, also noting that some people may already be catching the disease now without falling sick enough to attract attention.

SITTING barefoot and occasionally sipping tea in his small, tile-floored, two-story house in a middle-income Hanoi neighborhood, Mr. Hung, a slim man with a steady gaze, told of how the ordeal started when he took a three-hour bus trip to his hometown, Thai Binh, on Dec. 24.

He had gone to attend a wake for his elder brother's 19-month-old son, who had accidentally drowned - an incident so painful that Mr. Hung, who has no children, goes silent when asked about it, tears coming to his eyes.

Mr. Hung's elder brother, 46, and younger brother, 36, bought a live duck in the village market. The younger brother held the bird while the elder brother slaughtered and cleaned it before Mr. Hung arrived. The elder and younger brothers then made a pudding of raw duck blood, Mr. Hung said.

The elder brother, his brother-in-law and Mr. Hung each ate some of the pudding but decided it was too salty. So nobody else at the large extended family gathering ate any of it. After the lunch, Mr. Hung rode the bus back to Hanoi, where he works largely from home as a cement trader, spending a few hours a day with his cellphone constantly pressed to his ear. He said he did not go near any live poultry after his return to Hanoi.

Mr. Hung's elder brother became feverish on Dec. 27, said Dr. Nguyen Thi Tuong Van, the physician who oversaw the elder brother's care and then Mr. Hung's. The brother's family looked after him at home until Dec. 31, when they brought him, feverish and coughing, to Hanoi's Tropical Disease Institute, an elite hospital where Dr. Van is the deputy director of the emergency department.

Dr. Van said she and her colleagues did not initially suspect that the elder brother had bird flu, a disease that had seemed to vanish from humans in Vietnam in September, after an outbreak last winter.

The elder brother was given a range of drugs to relieve his symptoms. But the disease spread from his lungs to his kidneys and liver, and he died of liver damage on Jan. 9, Dr. Van said.

As is common in Vietnam, family members cared for the elder brother during his stay in hospital, feeding him and staying with him day and night. His wife provided most of the care, but Mr. Hung and his younger brother also came daily.

Mr. Hung's illness began the same day his brother died. Mr. Hung said he went immediately to the hospital where his wife worked. An X-ray showed a small shadow on his right lung, which was misdiagnosed as tuberculosis. He was sent to a tuberculosis hospital, where doctors were puzzled by his steadily rising fever, not a characteristic of tuberculosis.

His fever soaring, Mr. Hung was sent to the Tropical Disease Institute on Jan. 12 and put on numerous medications, including five drugs just for his liver, although not Tamiflu, a costly antiviral drug. He was still there when a chronically backlogged lab finally sent back word on Jan. 19 that the elder brother had died of bird flu, and soon after Mr. Hung received a diagnosis of the same disease.

THE mystery, then and now, is how Mr. Hung contracted the virus. Dr. Van, Mr. Hung and the Vietnamese government have taken the reassuring position that he contracted the virus by ingesting it along with the raw duck blood in the pudding. The government has warned the public against consuming raw poultry products, while playing down worries of person-to-person transmission.

Overseas flu experts are not convinced. Noting that avian influenza has previously seemed to have an incubation period of no more than a week, they are skeptical that Mr. Hung's symptoms would have appeared 16 days after the meal of blood pudding, and say it is more likely that he caught the disease from his older brother. "The incubation time is not that long; more than two weeks is impossible," said Guan Yi, an avian influenza specialist at Hong Kong University.

A single case of probable human-to-human transmission was documented in Thailand last autumn, but did not lead to a wider outbreak. That case appears to have involved greater personal contact than Mr. Hung's: a mother who cradled her sick daughter in her arms overnight until the girl vomited blood in the morning and died.

Dr. Van attributed Mr. Hung's survival to his extraordinary physical conditioning - he has been exercising since age 13, when he bicycled 90 miles a day to carry materials for his family's silk-weaving business. If he did catch the disease from his brother, flu experts noted, it is also possible that it was passed along in a somewhat less virulent form.

Mr. Hung said that he had long done breathing exercises as a form of relaxation, and that he resumed the breathing exercises as soon as his fever broke Jan. 18. He began running back and forth in his hospital room six times a day for 10 minutes at a time. The hospital released him from quarantine on Jan. 28, after tests showed him free of the disease. He immediately resumed jogging for an hour at dawn and for an hour just before going to sleep.

New York Times - February 5, 2005

There is a possibility your email account was used to send SPAM or other "viril" messages. Suggest you run an antivirus/trojan scan on your computer system. In particular, be on the lookout for a "backdoor" trojan.

Were you able to access your Hotmail account, when you typed in the requested characters?

For info:

Interested parties can register to download or receive a free* evaluation CD of Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 x64 Editions which support both AMD64 processors and Intel EM64T processors.

Details here:

* Postage, taxes and duties may be applicable to foreign orders. (See link for details.)

francois - Thanks for the headsup.

cheers

joka - Latest version of WinRAR is v3.42

Substantial improvements/fixes were introduced with v3.30 and again in v3.40 You may want to update your installation.

For more info, check your PM.

cheers

a few Google links.....some old, some new, all interesting:

Google Local

Google Mac

Google University Search

Google Linux

Google Gov

Google Options

Google Site Map

Google Features

Google Labs

Google (Hacker Style)

Google BSD

Google Mirror

Google Scholar

Google Firefox

Google Suggest

Google Easter

GMail by Google

Google Video

Google Adult

-----------

Speegle

Froogle

Cheatoogle

Google Fight

I'm sure you have a few "hidden" google links too. ????

joka - Could you explain what you mean by "getting archived inside winrar".

Normally, in WinRAR if you see a file in the main window, your actually looking at the file itself. Therefore if you highlight the file, then delete it (using either the right mouse button or the WinRAR delete button itself......the file will be deleted. (It is not sent to the Recycle Bin.)

Also.....after extraction, do you see any secondary window asking something like: "Some files have been extracted. Do you want to add them to the .......?".

Have you tried a uninstall/reinstall of WinRAR?

(PS - What version of WinRAR are you using?)

It is a well known medical fact, excess alcohol consumption damages/kills brain cells.

My brother recently passed away at 74, having spent the last 3 years in an "asisted living facility". He had been a heavy drinker most of his adult life. He was diagnosed with Dementia, Altzheimer and Parkinsons.

It is very sad to see the effect such a disease has on immediate family members, not to mention the financial burden.

-

In studying about Altzheimers, it was interesting to learn exercise does not seem to delay its onset, except, in one study, researchers found dancing did delay it's onset, for a few months. Doctors suspect this was due to the necessity to "think" about the steps you need to make, while dancing.

Mental exercise (reading, crossword puzzles, writing, etc.) all apparently "exercise" the brain and delay the on-set of diseases such as Dementia and Altzheimer.

As with most everything in life, it's a question of moderation.

Thanks Waldorf but that is not it.

I downloaded it from the Adobe online shop so it is a 30 day trial.

I want to activate it.

The help file in the application doesn't have a working link.

The adobe site has a link to an activation demo but that doesn't work

Maybe I have to wait for the trial to expire but that seems a funny way of doing it.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thetyim - If I remember correctly, Adobe does not support trial version of their products and therefore said products cannot be "activated" or "registered". If you download directly from the Adobe website, the product is (or should have been) "registered" at time of download. Re-registration should not be necessary.

Suggest you email their support group or check their forum.

(Note to readers: This post relates to Acrobat Pro, not Acrobat Reader.)

cheers

An respected manufacturer/supplier is Crucial Technologies, division of Micron. (They ship worldwide.)

Details here: http://www.crucial.com/

PS - There are apparently 2 versions of DDR-266 (184 pin DIMM and 200 pin SODIMM). It might help you find surplus or used sticks, if you could identify which version is needed.

cheers

Thetyim - If you have a "legal" version of Acrobat Pro v7, it can be activated/registered from most places in the world, via internet, phone, mail or fax. Adobe also provide registration support in various languages. For more details, check this link.

For info:

Adobe Reader 7.0 system requirements:

Windows

- Intel® Pentium® processor

- Microsoft® Windows 2000 with Service Pack 2, Windows XP Professional or Home Edition, or Windows XP Tablet PC Edition

- 128MB of RAM

- Up to 90MB of available hard-disk space

- Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher

Macintosh

- PowerPC® G3 processor

- Mac OS X v.10.2.8 or 10.3

- Up to 35MB of RAM

- Up to 125MB of available hard-disk space

For additional operating systems check here.

NOTE: Acrobat Reader 7 will not install on systems running Win98/98SE/ME or earlier. Check here for latest Windows compatable versions.

cheers

I believe apophyss is asking members with native language skills, to assist in translating various words/phrases into different languages, for incorporation into his program "Instant Time Zone".

For additional clarification. refer to his earlier post here (and the Dutch translations kindly provided by Darknight.)

I'm sure any help would be greatly appreciated.

cheers

.....After 2 years, do you think it's worth persuing??    

IMHO, Yes. If UBC exchanged the convertor once, then obviously it must have been a "legal" box. I don't think they have a leg to stand on.

The fact you originally purchased the box from an "authorized" reseller, the fact UBC replaced your original box, never questioning its legality, the fact you've taken extraordinary efforts (automatic bank payments) to insure "on-time payment of the subscription charges", all weigh heavily in your favour, as an honest, model citizen. The fact UBC has failed to provide or compensate you for "pre-paid" services such as the ASEAN conference and Olympic coverage you could not receive, then ignoring your "request-for-service" emails and phone calls, all violate their service policy obligations.

Would suggest you try exchanging the box again. As Astral suggested, talk to a supervisor. Play dumb and when asked what is wrong with the box, just say "it doesn't work, I need a new box". If asked any probing questions, just say, "I'm a lawyer, not an engineer.......It doesn't work, I need a new box".

You might also tell this supervisor, if the matter is not resolved immediately, you may be forced to take "other" actions and hint something to the effect, "I'm sure your supervisor will be very unhappy with you, when he has to spend a day or two in court, answering embarasing questions, which may make him look incompentent." (To give this supervisor more food-for-thought, you might even drop the word "redundancy", during the conversation.) Then ask to speak with this supervisors supervisor.

Would also suggest you write down the date/time of each and every communication with UBC; name and position of each person to whom you speak, phone number and extension, together with a brief outline of each conversation, especially verbal committments/agreements made by either party. Save as a "Note-To-File". Such a document carries considerable weight in court, in the event that becomes necessary.

Another avenue you may wish to investigate/persue is the filing of a formal complaint with those governmental agencies who license/regulate UBC.

good luck. Keep us posted.

(PS - After you get the new box, which I'm sure you will if you play your cards right, then demand compensation for "lost" programming (ASEAN conference, Olympics, etc). They may just give you a few months "free" service. )

IC. I though it was a typo of HBP - High Blood Pressure. Live and learn

I believe your correct and the posters actually intended to write HBP.

.....how do you know if you got HBB?

You'd need a special blood test.

More info here HBB

For info:

Today (28-Jan-05), P. Kolla released 5 new updates to "Spybot-Search & Destroy".

In addition to new "detection" profiles, included is a NEW skin for colorblind individuals.

cheers

vodka - I assume your above post was made using the "infected" machine, and therefore your able to surf to various sites.

Many virus's disable installed antivirus software, therefore you may need to utilize one of the online scanning programs. Most major antivirus software manufacturers (Norton. McAfee, eTrust, AVP, Panda, Kaspersky, etc.) have FREE online virus scanning of your system.

For info, a few such links are:

Symantec Security Check

Panda Active Scan

eTrust Scan

Kaspersky Labs

McAfee FreeScan

good luck

madsere - Medically, HBB (Hemoglobin, beta) refers to the HBB gene.

The HBB gene provides instructions for making a protein that is a component of hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is the protein carried inside red blood cells that transports oxygen through the body. Hemoglobin carries oxygen from the lungs to the rest of the body and then carries carbon dioxide from the body back to the lungs.

Mutations in the HBB gene can causes a number of diseases including Sickle Cell Anemia. A serious complication of sickle cell anemia is high blood pressure in the blood vessels that supply the lungs (pulmonary hypertension). Pulmonary hypertension occurs in about one-third of adults with sickle cell disease.

Doctor John - There is another technical question you should check, to insure you'll be able to view said movies properly, on a Japanese TV set.

Thailand utilizes the PAL broadcast standard (VHF 25 frames/625 lines) while Japan uses NTSC (VHF/UHF 30 frames/525 lines).

DVDs have to match the television standard in order to have proper color display. If a TV is PAL only, it will display NTSC pictures in black and white, and vice versa.

This problem can usually be solved by adjusting the DVD player to match the system or changing the default system to auto so that it will switch to the right system automatically. Most DVD player have the capability to switch between the two standards. Check your DVD player owner's manual or manufacturers website for details.

have a great trip.

I'm not familar with specific medical evacuation insurance available in the UK, however in the US, there are several excellent programs available. Cost varies depending on length of travel overseas and number of individuals covered (eg: a family of 4). Certainly similar policies are available in the UK and elsewhere.

Links :

MedJet Assistance

Travel Guard

The most important feature of any "Repatriation Insurance" is you select when/where your repat'd to. Some policies only cover you for repatriation to the hospital/country of their choice, not your choice, therefore READ THE SMALL PRINT.

cheers

(PS - Do a search, as I recall this subject was discussed quite extensively a while back.)

.....The surgeon seemed quite excited and wants me to go ahead and have the operation.

Supraspinatus Back

Would strongly suggest you get a second, even third opinion. (Never met a surgeon who didn't like to practice the speciality for which they were trained.)

With any surgery, major or minor, you should expect at least a 1 year "recovery" period. Torn tendons and muscles are very, very slow "healers".

The following link may be of interest to readers:

Sonography of Full-Thickness Supraspinatus Tears

Best of luck and a speedy recovery.

.....My only other option is getting cryogenically frozen for a year

Tried that.....didn't work

Seriously, agree with chingy, you need to work on will power. I smoked an average 2-3 packs (40+ cigs) per day for over 40 years. My doctor said stop or else...... (Scared the XXXX out of me.) I stopped "cold-turkey", and believe it or not, never had withdrawl cravings.......and that was over 10 years ago.

Never met an ex-smoker who said "this or that" medicine, drug, gum or other substance (crutch), helped them quit smoking.

IMHO, it's a question of mind over matter.

Anyone have a website for soken? Can't seem to peg one down for them!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Website:

http://www.sokenthai.com/en/company.html

Address:

Soken Electronics (Thailand) Co., Ltd.

22 Soi. Ruam-Mit Din-Daeng Rd., Samsen Nai Payathai Bangkok 10400

Tel.0-2644-6188 Fax: 0-2644-6166

E-mal : [email protected] | [email protected]

Check their download section for operational manuals. (pdf format)

(Hope the "E-mal" is a typo, and not indicative of their Quality Control" )

cheers

Fake Tsunami Plea Spreads Virus

Hackers use "Tsunami donation! Please help!"

in subject line to infect computers with worm.

January 17, 2005: 14:00hrs GMT

FRANKFURT, Germany (Reuters) - A mass e-mail posing as a plea for aid to help the victims of last month's Asian tsunami disaster is actually a vehicle for spreading a computer virus, Web security firm Sophos said Monday.

The worm appears with the subject line: "Tsunami donation! Please help!" and invites recipients to open an attachment called "tsunami.exe" -- which, if opened, will forward the virus to other Internet users.

The worm can also initiate a denial-of-service attack.

It is recommended you delete this email.

A few links to information and publications re: high blood pressure:

Links:

What Is High Blood Pressure?

National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute (NIH)

Lowering High Blood Pressure (NIH)

Publications:

"Your Guide to Lowering Blood Pressure" (pdf)

"My Blood Pressure Wallet Card" (pdf)

Many factors can effect your blood pressure readings, therefore it is always wise to consult with your physician as to diet and medications.

For info:

According to internal memos, the following is reportedly Microsoft's new schedule of release dates for Longhorn:

Beta 1 code complete - March 16, 2005 -

Beta 1 internal release and domain rollout - April 2005

Beta 2 (and product) code complete - July 1, 2005

Beta 2 internal release - 3rd.Qtr 2005

Beta 2 public release - September 2005 (PDC 2005)

Release Candidate 0 (RC0) internal release - Q4 2005

Release Candidate 1 (RC1) internal release - March 2006

Release to manufacturing (RTM) - May 2006

Final version should be in stores 2006.