New disease causes AIDS-like symptoms but not spread through virus

"Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV," the Associated Press reports. "This is another kind of acquired immune deficiency that is not inherited and occurs in adults, but doesn't spread the way AIDS does through a virus, said Dr. Sarah Browne, a scientist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases," who "helped lead the study with researchers in Thailand and Taiwan where most of the cases have been found since 2004," according to the news service. "Researchers are calling this new disease an 'adult-onset' immunodeficiency syndrome because it develops later in life and they don't know why or how," AP writes, adding, "The fact that nearly all the patients so far have been Asian or Asian-born people living elsewhere suggests that genetic factors and something in the environment such as an infection may trigger the disease, researchers conclude" (Marchione, 8/22).