Guangzhou, China - A hefty dose of steroids, some herbs and a whole lot of isolation was the recipe for success in the fight against Sars for southern China's Guangdong province, where the respiratory virus is thought to have originated last November.
Despite reporting more than 1 500 infections in the province, Guangdong contained severe acute respiratory syndrome with a 3.8% mortality rate - the lowest in the world, in which nearly 800 people died from more than 8 500 infections.
And while researchers are pleased with the rapid advances made in determining the methods of infection and finding appropriate treatment for Sars patients, there is still much that remains unknown about the disease.
"We know nothing about the pathogenesis, about what is happening inside and the mechanism of infection," Doctor Zhong Nanshan of the Guangdong Research Institute for Respiratory Disease (GRID) told foreign journalists visiting the facility.
"Where is the source of this disease? So many questions are left unanswered; there is much more work to do."
Working with researchers at Hong Kong University as well as with hospitals in Taiwan, Singapore and Canada - the only country outside of Asia to be hit with a Sars epidemic, Zhong's team made significant findings that could lead to a vaccine or assist treatment for further respiratory infections.
SARS is caused by a coronavirus much what produces the common cold. Its droplet transmission makes it highly contagious as does its ability to duplicate within the body.
Patients who died of Sars usually succumbed to hypoxia, or oxygen starvation, because they were unable to get enough air circulating through their swollen lungs.
Such inflammation was curbed with corticosteroids, Zhong said, which allow oxygen to move beyond the virus barrier and reach the oxygen-needing red cells.
Non-invasive ventilation, which feeds oxygen through a mask, rather than invasive ventilation that requires intubation or the implantation of a tube in a person's windpipe to breath on her own, also earned a measure of success once the inflammation was reduced, said Zhong, China's top Sars specialist.
But it was the inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, into treatment regimens that produced the most success for the researchers - something about which the Western-trained doctors were initially skeptical.
"TCM is a good method, a good therapy for all diseases, not just SARS," said Doctor Li Yiming, the director of the Intensive Care Unit at GRID and a collaborator with Zhong in the treatment of the 83 cases of Sars that passed through the facility from January to March.
"Western medicine focuses on anatomy, whereas TCM focuses on the function of the body."
Herbs such as balankan and yu-shing chao helped to cool body temperature, while huang-lin and the wild chrysanthemum assisted in reducing the painful swelling of lung tissues.
Applied in poultices or drunk as teas during the convalescence phase of treatment, TCM was also a way to show Sars patients that this brand-new disease, which mystified health professionals, could be taken care of using practices handed down through the generations.
"I am a Western-trained scientist so I will always put greater faith in science, but I know that there is a need for more study to include TCM in hospital regimens for treating other illnesses," said Li.
