Virus

ON THE MORNING that my last column - dealing with Internet privacy invaders - appeared in print, I was already having second thoughts about spreading Internet paranoia when I logged onto our network and opened my e-mail. The first item on the list was a message from a software company flak inviting me to open an attached photo of the slinky Russian tennis star, Anna Kournikova. Being a normal, red-blooded male, I thought for a second about taking the bait. But common sense took hold, and I noticed that the file had all the trappings of a virus - which indeed it was. I dashed off an e-mail to the sender, warning her that she was playing Typhoid Mary.

NEW YORK -- Rosemary Holmstrom and her son, C. J., wer watching Magic Johnson talk about the AIDS virus on television when the bright, active 7-year-old asked his mother a natural and innocent question."

Doctors and researchers almost never use the word "cure," but they came as close as they ever do this week describing a combination of drugs used to treat the severe liver disease hepatitis C. Among some patients, the drug cocktail of pegylated interferon and ribavirin completely kills the virus that causes hepatitis C, and keeps it from coming back, doctors reported at a Digestive Disease Weekly conference in Washington. The catch is, the drug combo does not work in about half of people with hepatitis C, and researchers still are not sure why it works so completely for some but fails in others.

Between 10 and 12 outbreaks of a Norwalk-like virus have been reported at nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Baltimore County since last month, prompting health care providers to isolate some patients and restrict visitors, county health officials said yesterday. The number of outbreaks of the virus is slightly higher this season than last, said Gary Thompson, a supervisor and outbreak coordinator for the county Health Department. He said the virus occurs every year, generally from December to March, but is more noticeable in facilities such as nursing homes where people are clustered.

Despite the suggestions of a growing number of studies, there is little evidence linking human cancer to a monkey virus that once contaminated polio vaccines, according to findings by a Johns Hopkins University researcher. Keerti V. Shah, professor of mo lecular microbiology and immunology, reviewed existing research for this month's issue of Reviews in Medical Virology and concluded that many of the studies should be treated skeptically because of numerous inconsistencies in the work.

NEW YORK -- Federal health investigators have found genetic evidence in hibernating mosquitoes collected recently in northeastern Queens that suggests the West Nile virus that killed seven people in the New York region last year survived the winter. Mosquitoes extracted from bunkers at the historic Fort Totten -- in three of 69 samples examined -- had low but detectable levels of a genetic material associated with the mosquito-borne virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported.

I have just acquired a laptop and have questions regarding security. What should I do about possible virus attacks and other hacker problems? I get confusing offers of Norton firewalls and anti-spam protections and pop-up stoppers and so on. My last computer had McAfee anti-virus, and I didn't worry about this issue. Now that I have a new machine I need some advice. It rankles a bit to urge you to agree to the Norton AntiVirus update subscription after the Norton software loaded on your computer by the manufacturer expires, but that's what I would do. If you prefer your former anti-virus outfit then by all means go to www.mcafee.

State and local health officials have concluded that a sick employee who was handling food transmitted a virus to more than 350 guests who dined at Turf Valley Resort and Conference Center in Ellicott City last month.The determination closed a three-week investigation into an outbreak of a Norwalk-like virus that caused vomiting and diarrhea, officials said."This was your common, garden-variety virus that can cause flu-like conditions," said Tori Leonard, state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokeswoman.

Scientists working to identify the cause of a mysterious respiratory illness that has killed 111 people worldwide are now almost certain that it is associated with a new kind of coronavirus, a family of viruses also responsible for the common cold. One of two groups of scientists whose findings were published online yesterday in separate New England Journal of Medicine articles also said they had found genetic evidence of the virus in some victims' stool samples. The finding lends support to a previously advanced theory that the virus might spread via cockroaches that have had contact with sewage, said Dr. Peter B. Jahrling, a U.S. Army virologist whose Fort Detrick laboratory is working to find drugs that might be effective against the infection.

I SPEND a lot of time recounting tales of woe from friends and readers, but this one is my own.Naturally, it happened at the worst possible time. With a business trip scheduled the next day, I was trying to finish off a dozen little jobs, including a presentation for the conference I was attending. This involved copying a lot of files between two different desktop computers and a laptop machine.I copied a couple of Microsoft Word files from a new computer running Windows 95 and opened them using my regular desktop machine, which was running Windows 3.1.I knew something was wrong when it took a long time for the file to open.