Virus

A deadly waterfowl virus is afoot among the ducks and geese that congregate in a cove near Anne Arundel County's Riviera Beach, and state wildlife officials are preparing to round up and destroy dozens of birds in hopes of curbing the outbreak.Robert Gould, spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources, said the virus was discovered after a resident of the area reported finding dead ducks by the shore of Stony Creek last week.Dead and live birds were tested at state laboratories in College Park and Salisbury and found to be infected with DVE, or duck virus enteritis, a disease related to the herpes virus.

Researchers have found a previously unknown virus in some men with prostate cancer, a discovery that could lead to better understanding and treatment of the disease, the most common type of cancer among men. The discoverers do not know exactly why the virus is present in the men, but "there is now a suggestion that prostate cancer could be caused by an infectious disease," said Dr. Eric Klein of the Cleveland Clinic, who reported the discovery yesterday at...

An Internet virus that has bedeviled media outlets across the country forced Anne Arundel County to shut down more than 2,000 computers this week, sending technicians on a furious race to contain the outbreak and produce payroll checks for county employees. The fast-mutating virus, known as Rinbot, disrupted operations at the Turner Broadcasting System last week, then attacked computers at The Boston Globe and almost all of the McClatchy Co.'s 32 newspapers. The malicious software, which takes command of PCs and can turn them into "zombies" that attack other systems or send out millions of spam e-mails, turned up in Anne Arundel County on Wednesday.

They're calling it the flu, but the illness that struck President Bush was more likely a stomach virus transmitted by a food handler who failed to use proper bathroom hygiene, a Maryland public health official said."

THERE NEVER SEEMS to be enough space in a column for everything I want to write. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, as an old hard-news guy, I have trouble with the notion that anybody wants to read more than 1,000 words at a time about any particular subject. Second - and more important - newsprint is expensive. Even when I want to write more, there isn't room for it. As a result, I usually have to cut my column to fit the space available; and, occasionally, readers notice that I've left something out. That's what happened recently when I wrote about the Anna Kournikova virus, an e-mail attachment that masquerades as a picture of the sexy Russian tennis star.

DUBLIN -- The nationwide debate over acquired immune deficiency syndrome continued in an unlikely setting last night, before a standing-room audience of more than 250 parents in an elementary school gymnasium in this rural hamlet in northern Harford County.Last week, word was leaked to parents and the news media that a student infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, had enrolled recently in the 279-student Dublin Elementary School. The news prompted some fearful parents to remove their children from classes and led the county school board to convene a special meeting aimed at educating parents about the fatal disease.

The state health department has dramatically reduced its estimate of how many Marylanders are infected with the AIDS virus -- suggesting that the true number is one-quarter to one-half previous estimates.Cautioning that the lower estimates should not lull people into complacency, top health officials said yesterday they believe that between 16,000 and 28,000 people across Maryland were infected at the close of 1990.That compares with a previous estimate of 60,000, a projection that officials said was based, in part, on an outmoded formula and the belief that infected individuals were transmitting the virus at an unrealistically fast rate.

Four years after a public health campaign first implored Baltimore's drug users to "reach for the bleach," a study has found that bleaching hasn't lived up to its early billing as a potent way to protect addicts from contracting the AIDS virus.Dr. David Vlahov, a Johns Hopkins scientist, yesterday told a world conference on AIDS, held in Italy, that addicts who say they faithfully disinfect their needles with bleach contracted the virus at only a slightly lower rate than those who never bleach.

Equine herpes virus 1, the virus that has sickened horses at Pimlico, seems to be infecting more animals than in the past and causing more serious symptoms, experts say. "It appears that it is more common," said Klaus Osterrieder, a veterinarian and virologist at Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. "And it appears that it is nastier." The virus, known as EHV-1, causes a wide range of symptoms. It often produces respiratory problems and fever, and it can cause pregnant mares to abort their fetuses.

A sixth horse has died at the Columbia Horse Center after becoming ill with equine herpes virus, which has troubled the Columbia Association-owned facility since late March. The horse, named Cherrie, had been sick for a month, and last week had to be held up by a canvas sling. But another infection hurt the animal, who was euthanized Sunday, the day after 150 people celebrated the Preakness with games and food at the center on Gorman Road. No new cases have appeared, and center officials hope they can resume normal operations soon.