BOSTON (AP) - Researchers have identified a mysterious new disease that has left scores of people in Asia and some in the United States with AIDS-like symptoms even though they are not infected with HIV.
The patients' immune systems become damaged, leaving them unable to fend off germs as healthy people do. What triggers this isn't known, but the disease does not seem to be contagious.
Scientists at the National Institutes of Health led a study in Thailand and Taiwan of more than 100 people with the disease. Most of them make substances that block a chemical that helps the body clear infections.
The study is in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.
