摘要篇首： Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is an infectious disease that originally emerged in China in November 2002. It subsequently spread worldwide.Investigators involved in an international collaboration have attempted to determine a specific etiology in order to redefine what is currently best described as a syndrome into a specific disease. At present, a novel coronavirus is generally accepted as the single most probable causative agent. In the case of HIV infection, monocytes/macrophages are infected early in the infection process,and the activation of monocytes/macrophages can influence the susceptibility of these cells to infection. 1Therefore, we examined the number of monocytes and the expression of CD14 and HLA-DR in the peripheral blood of patients with SARS to determine whether monocytes were involved in the pathogenesis of SARS.