A new report says Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, can spread through the air.

A Canadian study says the SARS virus, which killed 8 hundred people in China in 2003, was discovered in the air in a patient's room in Toronto,

The findings were published in the new edition of the US-based Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America, the journal's publisher, said the findings are the first experimental confirmation of the SARS virus presence in the air of an infected patient's hospital room.

However, the study's researchers warned that their results do not document any cases of airborne transmission of the SARS virus from one person to another, but only dissemination from an infected patient to the air via breathing or coughing.

Previously, SARS was thought to spread through direct contamination by infected water droplets from a person's cough or sneeze.