A detailed look at two cases of a deadly new respiratory virus called MERS suggests people who have the disease should be isolated for at least 12 days to avoid spreading it, doctors reported Wednesday.
The new germ, a respiratory infection, was first seen in the Middle East and so far has sickened more than 40 people worldwide, killing about half of them.
In the report published online in the journal Lancet, French scientists said the first patient visited Dubai. He is thought to have caught MERS there before passing it onto the second patient, who had no travel history and with whom he shared a room for three days.
Health officials have previously noted MERS can be spread among people if they are in close contact and clusters of the illness have been spotted in countries including Britain, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia. Experts aren't sure how humans are catching the virus but think it may originate in animals like bats or camels.
In a speech on Monday in Geneva, the World Health Organization's Director-General, Dr. Margaret Chan, said her greatest health concern is MERS. She called the ongoing outbreaks "alarm bells" and said the virus "is a threat to the entire world."
French doctors estimated the disease's incubation period to be from 9 to 12 days for the second case, longer than the 7 to 10 days previously reported by others. They said longer quarantines might be necessary to stop the virus' spread and noted people with underlying medical conditions could be at higher risk.
The scientists wrote that if the virus evolves further, it could become more dangerous. With further mutations, they said MERS "might become increasingly transmissible" and must be continuously assessed.
Earlier this week, French officials said the first patient died. The second remains in critical condition.
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oma?n sr?a X?c -fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"'>So far, only a few adults have had trachea, or windpipe transplants, usually to replace ones destroyed by cancer. The windpipes came from dead donors or were lab-made, sometimes using stem cells. Last month, a 2-year-old girl born without a windpipe received one grown from her own stem cells onto a plastic scaffold at a hospital in Peoria, Ill.
Kaiba had a different problem — an incompletely formed bronchus, one of the two airways that branch off the windpipe like pant legs to the lungs. About 2,000 babies are born with such defects each year in the United States and most outgrow them by age 2 or 3, as more tissue develops.
In severe cases, parents learn of the defect when the child suddenly stops breathing and dies. That almost happened when Kaiba was 6 weeks old at a restaurant with his parents, April and Bryan Gionfriddo, who live in Youngstown, in northeast Ohio.
"He turned blue and stopped breathing on us," and his father did CPR to revive him, April Gionfriddo said.
More episodes followed, and Kaiba had to go on a breathing machine when he was 2 months old. Doctors told the couple his condition was grave.
"Quite a few of them said he had a good chance of not leaving the hospital alive. It was pretty scary," his mother said. "We pretty much prayed every night, hoping that he would pull through."
Then a doctor at Akron Children's Hospital, Marc Nelson, suggested the experimental work in Michigan. Researchers there were testing airway splints made from biodegradable polyester that is sometimes used to repair bone and cartilage.
Kaiba had the operation on Feb. 9, 2012. The splint was placed around his defective bronchus, which was stitched to the splint to keep it from collapsing. The splint has a slit along its length so it can expand and grow as the child does — something a permanent, artificial implant could not do.
The plastic is designed to degrade and gradually be absorbed by the body over three years, as healthy tissue forms to replace it, said the biomedical engineer who led the work, Scott Hollister.
Green and Scott Hollister have a patent pending on the device and Hollister has a financial interest in a company that makes scaffolds for implants.
Dr. John Bent, a pediatric specialist at New York's Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said only time will tell if this proves to be a permanent solution, but he praised the researchers for persevering to develop it.
"I can think of a handful of children I have seen in the last two decades who suffered greatly ... that likely would have benefitted from this technology," Bent said.