Environmental Medicine News

The News Review:

- More From the Science & Medicine Desk
- When limbs became fins
- Deaths Prompt Call for Pet Rodent Suppliers to Screen for Virus
- Organ-recipients’ Deaths Prompt Call For Suppliers Of Pet Rodents…
- Neurontin Deal - Slap On The Hand To Pfizer

More From the Science & Medicine Desk
Washington Post - May 25, 2006
Concerns over those effects have led some doctors to urge the Food and Drug Administration to require a "black box" warning on package inserts for drugs such as Ritalin, Concerta and Adderall. The issue was debated in a series of letters in today’s New England Journal of Medicine, including some from doctors worried about the dangers of not treating attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Hamster and Patients’ DeathsA virus killed three patients in the past year after they received donated body organs, and a pet hamster may be partly to blame, a report said yesterday. The deaths occurred in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and each involved patients who had received transplanted organs from the same woman, 45, whose hamster was later found to carry the virus, researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. The virus was not found in the woman. The patients all received drugs that suppressed their immune systems, which may have allowed the virus to thrive… DNA is the stuff of genes in mice and men. But the new study indicates that DNA’s chemical cousin, RNA, produced the odd result — mice with distinctive white tail tips. For the study, reported in today’s journal Nature, scientists produced mice that carried one normal copy of a gene and one aberrant copy. After breeding, each mouse passed along one of its gene copies to each offspring. The offspring, in turn, ended up with two copies, one from each parent. CONTINUED 1 document.

When limbs became fins
Christian Science Monitor - May 25, 2006
Front legs became fins; hind legs vanished. Some scientists have argued that the genetic shifts needed to foster the loss of the hind legs happened somewhat quickly. But a team led by Hans Thewissen at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine in Rootstown, found evidence that the change was far more gradual - more along the lines Charles Darwin described for evolution. Evidence from modern spotted-dolphin embryos suggests the genetic switch for the hind limbs’ disappearance came only after they underwent millions of years of downsizing. Results appear in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science… The team, led by Robert Embley of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle, also found that the surrounding water was as acidic as lemon juice - producing a habitat fit only for microbes and a few species of shrimp. The scientists suggest that these habitats may be unique to such “arc” volcanoes. Their work appears in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature. Saving energy with nanotubesAt only two-billionths of a meter across, carbon nanotubes would demand a lot of pucker from a milk-shake drinker hoping to draw a taste of chocolate. But for a team of Bay Area scientists, these tubes could be just the ticket for slashing the amount of energy it takes to separate chemicals by passing the mixture through porous membranes. This method is a widely used separation technique, but the process can be energy intensive. But researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory found that water and gas flow through their porous nanotube arrays far faster than predicted.

Deaths Prompt Call for Pet Rodent Suppliers to Screen for Virus
Newswise - Newswise (press release) - May 25, 2006
According to two articles in the May 25, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, seven out of eight infected transplant recipients died from lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) that they almost indisputably received with donated organs. The organs came from two donors, both of whom died from unrelated causes but were silently infected with LCMV. One donor had acquired the virus from a pet hamster and the other from unknown sources, but neither showed outward signs of the disease, the articles said. LCVM was “among the first human pathogenic viruses to be isolated” by medical researchers in the mid-1930s. It is one of about 20 members of the virus family Arenaviridae, each one of which in nature infects a separate rodent species that spreads the virus but causes minimal or no overt disease in the rodent host, according to Dr… “One obvious way to reduce the risk of human infection with LCMV is to have suppliers of pet rodents screen their colonies for the infection,” Peters writes in the journal article titled “Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus—Any Old Enemy up to New Tricks. ” He notes that mice are known to carry LCMV infection that they can spread to other species without getting sick themselves. Hamsters and possibly other pet rodents, although not natural hosts in the wild, can be infected and transmit the virus in breeding colonies “with disastrous consequences,” Peters notes. “Wild mice can introduce LCMV into colonies of either hamsters or mice,” Peters’ article continues. “Thus, regulations to ensure the absence of virus in rodent colonies would reduce the risk of LCMV infection posed to pet owners and decrease the risk of transmission from transplanted organs. “Such screening seems justified,” the paper continues, “given the serious nature of LCMV disease and the particular risk to fetuses: LCMV infection in pregnant women is an increasingly recognized cause” of the birth defects “hydrocephalus, mental retardation, and chorioretinitis in newborns. ”© 2008 Newswise.

Organ-recipients’ Deaths Prompt Call For Suppliers Of Pet Rodents…
Medical News Today - May 25, 2006
5 (2 votes)Article Opinions:. According to two articles in the May 25, 2006, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, seven out of eight infected transplant recipients died from lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV) that they almost indisputably received with donated organs. The organs came from two donors, both of whom died from unrelated causes but were silently infected with LCMV. One donor had acquired the virus from a pet hamster and the other from unknown sources, but neither showed outward signs of the disease, the articles said. LCVM was “among the first human pathogenic viruses to be isolated” by medical researchers in the mid-1930s. It is one of about 20 members of the virus family Arenaviridae, each one of which in nature infects a separate rodent species that spreads the virus but causes minimal or no overt disease in the rodent host, according to Dr… “One obvious way to reduce the risk of human infection with LCMV is to have suppliers of pet rodents screen their colonies for the infection,” Peters writes in the journal article titled “Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis Virus-Any Old Enemy up to New Tricks. ” He notes that mice are known to carry LCMV infection that they can spread to other species without getting sick themselves. Hamsters and possibly other pet rodents, although not natural hosts in the wild, can be infected and transmit the virus in breeding colonies “with disastrous consequences,” Peters notes. “Wild mice can introduce LCMV into colonies of either hamsters or mice,” Peters’ article continues. “Thus, regulations to ensure the absence of virus in rodent colonies would reduce the risk of LCMV infection posed to pet owners and decrease the risk of transmission from transplanted organs. “Such screening seems justified,” the paper continues, “given the serious nature of LCMV disease and the particular risk to fetuses: LCMV infection in pregnant women is an increasingly recognized cause” of the birth defects “hydrocephalus, mental retardation, and chorioretinitis in newborns. ” Tom Curtistcurtis@utmb.

Neurontin Deal - Slap On The Hand To Pfizer
OpEdNews - May 25, 2006
While Neurontin might be the most notorious, it is certainly not the only problem. A study published in the May 8, 2006, Archives of Internal Medicine, determined that more than one out of every 7 prescriptions written for 160 commonly used drugs were for off-label uses that lacked scientific support. The study was based on information from the IMS Health National Disease and Therapeutic Index that defines drug prescribing patterns and provides market data on drug companies. In 2001, an estimated 150 million prescriptions, or 21% of prescriptions written, were for off-label use, according to the Archives study. To reach its results, the study first determined whether a prescription was off-label and then assessed the level of available scientific evidence supporting the use, through the Drugdex system, a comprehensive summary of evidence supporting off-label uses of prescription drugs. The study found that 73%, or 109 million off-label prescriptions, had little or no supporting evidence… “They then amplify and magnify those opinions,” he says, “and put them in the form of a treatment protocol that can be implemented in any state with the approval of a few key decision-makers. Stacking the deck with industry friendly “experts” is apparently common. An investigation by the scientific journal Nature found “extensive” financial connections between drug companies and the advisory panels, with as many as 70% of the panels affected. In one instance, Nature found every member of a panel had received payments from the company making the drug that was recommended.