Signs and symptoms

These symptoms may be caused by mesothelioma or by other, less serious conditions.
Mesothelioma that affects the pleura can cause these signs and symptoms:
Chest wall pain
Pleural effusion, or fluid surrounding the lung
Shortness of breath
Fatigue or anemia
Wheezing, hoarseness, or cough
Blood in the sputum (fluid) coughed up (hemoptysis)

Mesothelioma

Mesothelioma is a form of cancer that is almost always caused by exposure to asbestos. In this disease, malignant cells develop in the mesothelium, a protective lining that covers most of the body's internal organs. Its most common site is the pleura (outer lining of the lungs and internal chest wall), but it may also occur in the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity), the heart, the pericardium (a sac that surrounds the heart) or tunica vaginalis.
Most people who develop mesothelioma have worked on jobs where they inhaled asbestos particles, or they have been exposed to asbestos dust and fiber in other ways. It has also been suggested that washing the clothes of a family member who worked with asbestos can put a person at risk for developing mesothelioma.[2Unlike lung cancer, there is no association between mesothelioma and smoking, but smoking greatly increases risk of other asbestos-induced cancer. Compensation via asbestos funds or lawsuits is an important issue in mesothelioma

Severe acute respiratory syndrome

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS; pronounced /sɑrz/, sarz) is a respiratory disease in humans which is caused by the SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). There has been one near pandemic to date, between the months of November 2002 and July 2003, with 8,096 known infected cases and 774 deaths (a case-fatality rate of 9.6%) worldwide being listed in the World Health Organization's (WHO) 21 April 2004 concluding report. Within a matter of weeks in early 2003, SARS spread from the Guangdong province of China to rapidly infect individuals in some 37 countries around the world.
Mortality by age group as of 8 May 2003 is below 1 percent for people aged 24 or younger, 6 percent for those 25 to 44, 15 percent in those 45 to 64 and more than 50 percent for those over 65.[4] For comparison, the case fatality rate for influenza is usually around 0.6 percent (primarily among the elderly) but can rise as high as 33 percent in locally severe epidemics of new strains. The mortality rate of the primary viral pneumonia form is about 70 percent