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Source: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/can...102015193.html
The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION
SARS survivors struggle with symptoms years after outbreak: researchers
By: Sheryl Ubelacker, Health Reporter, The Canadian Press
Posted: 1/09/2010 5:18 PM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 1/09/2010 6:22 PM
TORONTO - Sylvia Gordon is plagued by painful muscles and joints, shortness of breath and a lack of energy, all unwanted gifts of a disease that keeps on giving.
The nurse was among the first wave of health-care workers and patients stricken by SARS in early 2003, but the five-month outbreak that killed 800 people worldwide, including 44 in the Toronto area, is far from done among those who survived the disease.
Patients who were infected but came through the epidemic are learning that severe acute respiratory syndrome can leave lingering physical and psychological effects, which not only don't resolve over time but can actually get worse.
"I have not been able to return back to the front line at all," said Gordon, 57, of her 22-year nursing career. "It's very difficult because one day you're feeling really well and the next day you're not."
SARS, initially considered a severely acute illness that would resolve like other pneumonias, has turned out to be a chronic disease with symptoms that researchers speculate could persist for life.
"It certainly is something that's unfolding that we're learning about," said Dr. Paula Gardner, a psychologist at St. John's Rehab Hospital in Toronto, who is studying the long-term effects of SARS. "We couldn't know this before because it's a completely new disease.
"And so we're sort of watching and waiting and measuring and trying to see what's going to happen."
Gardner and a team of researchers at St. John's Rehab have been following 40 people who contracted SARS in 2003, most of them health-care workers.
The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION
SARS survivors struggle with symptoms years after outbreak: researchers
By: Sheryl Ubelacker, Health Reporter, The Canadian Press
Posted: 1/09/2010 5:18 PM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 1/09/2010 6:22 PM
TORONTO - Sylvia Gordon is plagued by painful muscles and joints, shortness of breath and a lack of energy, all unwanted gifts of a disease that keeps on giving.
The nurse was among the first wave of health-care workers and patients stricken by SARS in early 2003, but the five-month outbreak that killed 800 people worldwide, including 44 in the Toronto area, is far from done among those who survived the disease.
Patients who were infected but came through the epidemic are learning that severe acute respiratory syndrome can leave lingering physical and psychological effects, which not only don't resolve over time but can actually get worse.
"I have not been able to return back to the front line at all," said Gordon, 57, of her 22-year nursing career. "It's very difficult because one day you're feeling really well and the next day you're not."
SARS, initially considered a severely acute illness that would resolve like other pneumonias, has turned out to be a chronic disease with symptoms that researchers speculate could persist for life.
"It certainly is something that's unfolding that we're learning about," said Dr. Paula Gardner, a psychologist at St. John's Rehab Hospital in Toronto, who is studying the long-term effects of SARS. "We couldn't know this before because it's a completely new disease.
"And so we're sort of watching and waiting and measuring and trying to see what's going to happen."
Gardner and a team of researchers at St. John's Rehab have been following 40 people who contracted SARS in 2003, most of them health-care workers.