Department of Health Director-General Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) said yesterday that a recent study concluding that susceptibility to SARS can be related to genetics and that "southern Asians" are more susceptible to the disease lacked a scientific basis.
Chen made the remarks during a SARS prevention and relief monitoring committee meeting at the Legislative Yuan when he was asked about the study conducted by a hematologist at Mackay Memorial Hospital.
"The number of samples used in the study was too small," Chen said, adding that he believes the virus attacks human beings irrespective of their ethnicity.
Dr. Marie Lin (林媽利), of Mackay's Transfusion Medicine Laboratory, said Wednesday that after comparing hundreds of blood samples from SARS patients, she and her team found that people with the human leucocype antigen (HLA)-B46 gene are more likely to fall victim to SARS, while people with the HLA-B13 gene are relatively immune to the SARS virus.
Lin said that about 10 percent of Taiwan's population has the HLA-B46 gene, and that these people share the same gene as other "southern Asians," including people from China's Guangdong and Fujian provinces, and people from Hong Kong, Singapore and parts of Vietnam, where people have maintained close genetic connections over the past 400 years.
Taiwan's Aborigines, as well as Caucasians and African people, do not have the SARS-prone HLA-B46 gene, according to Lin.
Chen said that the public need not heed the study, adding that the basic approach is still to take precautions against the disease, whatever one's origins or ethnicity.
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