Another mystery illness has appeared in China. The AP reports:

Some 400 students at a university in central China have come down with a mystery fever and the cause was under investigation, state media said Monday.

The first cases was reported March 26, when 22 students at the Henan University of Science and Technology in the city of Luoyang were sickened, the official Xinhua News Agency said on its Web site.

"The situation has been effectively controlled," Xinhua said. "After one or two days of treatment, they regained their health."

Lab tests have ruled out the possibility of an outbreak of influenza, it said, and the health officials were still trying to determine what the sickness was and what had caused it.

It is impossible to know if this is some new illness, or just an ordinary "bug." China's population is so large that sheer numbers dictate that outbreaks of illnesses will occur regularly. But sanitation is not as good as it should be, and various pollutants have been known to cause illness. In addition, as in the case of bird flu, animals and humans live together in close quarters, also facilitating the spread of illness.

In the past, reports of such outbreaks would never have reached the world's mass media. let's hope this is not something for the Chinese or us to worry about.

Hat tip: China Challenges

Thomas Lifson  4 4 06