scinews022193
'Women
sickened by cooking oil in '68 still have health problems'
The
Yomiuri Shimbun
Many
women who became ill after consuming cooking oil contaminated with
polychlorinated biphenyl in 1968 still suffer health problems,
according to a victims support group. The Tokyo-based group said some
of the women have not been officially recognized as victims of the
mass poisoning. More than 14,000 people fell ill after consuming
cooking oil produced by Kanemi Soko, which is based in Kitakyushu.
Many suffered symptoms of food poisoning, while others had skin and
internal disorders. A dioxin contained in polychlorinated biphenyl
that was found in the oil was blamed for the problems. The government
has officially recognized only about 1,900 patients as victims of the
poisoning. The support group surveyed 150 women aged between 20 and
80 last summer and received valid responses from 59 of them. Most of
those polled consumed food cooked in the contaminated oil when aged
between 2 and 41. Three, however, were born to women who had consumed
the cooking oil. Many of the women reported suffering from more than
one illness. Twenty-nine had had surgery or therapy for ovarian
cancer, endometriosis or uterine fibroids. Twenty-six had had
miscarriages, delivered stillborn babies or had given birth to babies
with unusually dark skin pigmentation Forty-nine women said they
suffered menstrual problems, while nine said they had developed
thyroid abnormalities.
EU
seeks Japan's help to seal drug agreement
BY
Leo Fransella Special to The Daily Yomiuri
With
a ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization scheduled to
start Feb. 14 in Tokyo, the key negotiating parties look set to
accept a European Union proposal to break the deadlock over
trade-related property rights, the head of the European Commission
delegation in Japan, Bernhard Zepter, told reporters Thursday. "An
early agreement should be possible " Zepter said. "Our
message to Japan is, 'please support our proposal because we think it
could help break the deadlock'," he added. The dispute centers
on the access developing countries have to generic drugs used to
combat communicable diseases such as AIDS tuberculosis and malaria.
Under WTO rules, pharmaceutical firms in developing countries pay
patent fees to produce drugs under license. Activists have criticized
European and American pharmaceutical giants for restricting
developing countries' access to their drugs by charging high patent
fees. All members of the body handling trade-related property rights
talks agreed in December 2002 that there should be a system of
compulsory licensing of drugs able to treat a defined group of
diseases. However, talks were deadlocked after U.S. negotiators
demanded that the number of diseases on the list be reduced, fearing
that generic drugs manufactured under compulsory license would flood
markets in developed countries.
Scientists
graft pig hearts onto treated sheep
By
Joe Ruff The
Associated Press
OMAHA,
Neb. - Nebraska scientists say they successfully grafted a pig's
heart to a sheep by manipulating the immune systems of both animals,
a step that may soon allow scientists to grow organs for human
transplantation. Other scientists conducting similar cross-species
experiments said the Nebraska results are limited because the
livestock are genetically similar. More research into the
biochemistry of tissue rejection is needed before human trials could
take lace they cautioned. "The main practical limitation is that
the immunity barrier between the sheep and the pig is probably lower
than that between a pig and a human " said Jeffrey Platt, a
transplant biologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "It
would not shock me to find out it didn't have that big an impact on a
human," Platt said Details of the experiment conducted on 13
pairs of pigs and sheep at Nebraska University Medical Center appear
in the February issue of the journal Annals of Surgery. First,
researchers took bone marrow cells from the sheep and transferred
them to a pig fetus. After the pig was born, they took
disease-fighting white cells from the pig's spleen and transferred
them back to the sheep. These cells contained genetic material from
both animals. When the pig matured, its heart was grafted to blood
vessels located below the sheep's neck Modest amounts of
immunosuppression drugs were given to the sheep to avoid organ
rejection ut the dosages were lower than those typically given to
humans receiving a heart transplant said the study's senior author,
William Beschorner. Of the 13 sheep with pig hearts, one rejected the
new heart. Five more showed milder rejection signs, and were
successfully treated with anti-inflammatory medications. The
remaining sheep showed no signs of organ rejection for as long as 70
days. In contrast, all 12 control sheep rejected their new hearts
within eight days. None of them were inoculated with pig cells before
the procedure, said Beschorner, who also is president of Omaha- based
Ximerex Inc., an animal-to-human transplant company. Beschorner said
a trial using humans and pigs would follow a similar method, with the
pig fetus receiving human bone marrow cells. Growing pig organs large
enough for human use would take about six months. Besides hearts, the
technology could be applicable to kidney, liver and pancreatic islet
cell transplants, Beschorner said. Only a fraction of people who need
transplants get them because of a shortage of human organs, and many
die while waiting. In August, PPL Therapeutics, the Scottish company
that helped clone Dolly the sheep in 1997 cloned piglets lacking both
copies of the gene that makes the human immune system reject
transplanted pig tissue. The company said testing pig organs m humans
was about two years away . The Associated Press A sheep with a pig
heart grafted to its neck at the Nebraska University Medical Center
in Omaha.
Anti-infection
drug may prevent stroke damage
The
Associated Press
WASHlNGTON
Scientists working with mice have found that a compound used to fight
severe blood infections may be useful in preventing stroke damage.
Activated protein C was found to reduce the likelihood that brain
cells would self-destruct after a stroke, the researchers report in
Monday's online issue of the journal Nature Medicine. Strokes occur
when the blood supply is cut off to part of the brain, by a blood
clot for example. Some cells die right away; others are damaged and
self-destruct later in a process called apoptosis. In mice that had
strokes, about 65 percent of the cells that would have died after the
stroke survived when the mice was treated with the protein, according
to the lead researcher, Berislav Zlokovic of the University of
Rochester in Rochester, N.Y. The protein also is the active
ingredient in a drug approved two years ago for human use in the
treatment of sepsis, a severe blood infection that can be deadly. In
that case it acts by reducing blood clotting and inflammation. In the
case of a stroke victim, the protein decreases the cellular signals
that persuade brain cells to kill themselves after a stroke and
boosts signals that persuade the cells to survive, according to
Zlokovic and co-lead author John Griffin of Scripps Research
Institute in La Jolla, Calif.
