Atypical Scrapie

Via ProMED-mail: the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry reports on a case of atypical scrapie.

MAFBNZ Principal International Adviser Dr Stuart MacDiarmid says global knowledge about atypical scrapie/Nor 98 is evolving. The widely accepted mainstream scientific view is that it occurs spontaneously or naturally in very small numbers of older sheep in all sheep populations around the world.
"This positive detection of atypical scrapie/Nor 98 in a sheep from New Zealand's national flock reinforces that view. Every country that has conducted sufficient surveillance for atypical scrapie/Nor 98 has found it in their flocks. This includes most Scandinavian and EU countries, the UK, the USA and Canada," he says.
The detection does not change New Zealand's status as free from scrapie.

Mad Elk and Mad Fish

Via ProMED-mail: last month, the New York Times reported on the spread of CWD among elk via fecal-oral transmission, due to preclinical shedding of prions.

Dr. Aiken said prions tended to bind to clay in soil and to persist indefinitely. When deer graze on infected dirt, prions that are tightly bound to clay will persist for long periods in their intestinal regions. So there is no chance chronic wasting disease will be eradicated, he said. Outside the laboratory, nothing can inactivate prions bound to soil. They are also impervious to radiation.

Also, Practical Fish Keeping reported last month on a study of mad cow and scrapie transmissibility to fish:

The authors found that while the bream never displayed clinical signs of spongiform encephelopathies during the study period, the brains of TSE-fed fish sampled two years after challenge showed signs of neurodegeneration and accumulation of deposits that reacted positively with antibodies raised against sea bream PrP. The control groups, fed with brains from uninfected animals, showed no such signs.

Swine Flu Shots vs. Seasonal Flu Shots

Via ProMED-mail: temperatures are still high in Canada, where the Globe and Mail reports that two and a half provinces have rebelled against seasonal flu shots in reaction to as-yet-unpublished research showing that a seasonal flu shot makes people more susceptible to swine flu.

The hodge-podge of vaccination strategies comes after a controversial, unpublished study suggested that people under 50 are twice as likely to contract the H1N1 virus if they have received a seasonal flu shot compared to unvaccinated people.
With no data revealing the optimal way of rolling out vaccines against the looming double threat of seasonal flu and the pandemic swine flu virus, the abrupt changes by provinces and territories could create disarray in inoculation programs, with fewer people turning up for either shot, potentially resulting in more cases of severe illness.
New Brunswick's public health authorities, skeptical about the science behind the Canadian study, have moved up seasonal flu shots for all their residents to October before proceeding to the pandemic vaccine campaign. Meanwhile, Quebec and Nunavut are deferring their seasonal flu campaigns until after their H1N1 mass vaccination clinics.

Shaken Baby Syndrome

Radley Balko at Reason Online reports on growing doubts about "shaken baby syndrome":

The phrase shaken baby syndrome entered the pop culture lexicon in 1997, when British au pair Louise Woodward was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Massachusetts infant Matthew Eappen. At the time, the medical community almost universally agreed on the symptoms of SBS. But starting around 1999, a fringe group of SBS skeptics began growing into a powerful reform movement. The Woodward case brought additional attention to the issue, inviting new research into the legitimacy of SBS. Today, as reflected in the Edmunds case, there are significant doubts about both the diagnosis of SBS and how it's being used in court.
In a compelling article published this month in the Washington University Law Review, DePaul University law professor Deborah Teurkheimer argues that the medical research has now shifted to the point where U.S. courts must conduct a major review of most SBS cases from the last 20 years. The problem, Teurkheimer explains, is that the presence of three symptoms in an infant victim—bleeding at the back of the eye, bleeding in the protective area of the brain, and brain swelling—have led doctors and child protective workers to immediately reach a conclusion of SBS. These symptoms have long been considered pathognomic, or exclusive, to SBS.

If you're really interested, you can dig up some ideas about alternate causes of SBS at this blog.

Mattel Exempted Itself from Lead Testing

Via Purple Pawn: The LA Times reported late last month that Mattel had lobbied itself out of third-party lead testing of its products.

"It's really ironic that the company that was a principal source of the problem" is now getting favorable treatment from the government, said Michael Green, executive director of the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland.
Mattel is getting a competitive advantage, Green said, because smaller companies must pay independent labs to do the tests. Testing costs can run from several hundred dollars to many thousands.

Medical Isotope Shortage

Via Orthoprax: the Journal of the American Medical Association reports on the ongoing "critical" shortage of medical isotopes (^99mTc) due to a reactor shutdown in Canada.

The shortage was expected to be exacerbated by the temporary closing of the Netherlands reactor for a month-long maintenance inspection from July 18 to August 18. Because the isotopes have a relatively short half life, they cannot be stockpiled.
Canadian authorities said they were working with medical isotope distributors and others to maximize the use of existing isotope supplies and with other international producers to increase isotope production and to coordinate shutdowns and other operations.

Since the journal article was written, the reopening of the Ontario reactor has been pushed into 2010, causing some trouble for the company that sells the isotopes, the Canwest news service reports:

Life sciences company MDS Inc. said Wednesday it has agreed to sell its analytical technologies division to Danaher Corp. for $650 million in cash and is also looking to unload its pharma business.
The Mississauga, Ont.-based company cited the recession and the prolonged shutdown of the National Research Universal reactor in Chalk River, Ont., as its reasons for the sales, which will allow MDS to focus on its isotope business, MDS Nordion.
Stephen DeFalco, chief executive at MDS, said the company still expects the reactor to restart in spring 2010.

A Cure for MS?

Via a mailing list: Science Daily reports that multiple sclerosis has been reversed in mice.

The new treatment, appropriately named GIFT15, puts MS into remission by suppressing the immune response. This means it might also be effective against other autoimmune disorders like Crohn's disease, lupus and arthritis, the researchers said, and could theoretically also control immune responses in organ transplant patients. Moreover, unlike earlier immune-supppressing therapies which rely on chemical pharamaceuticals, this approach is a personalized form of cellular therapy which utilizes the body's own cells to suppress immunity in a much more targeted way.
GIFT15 was discovered by a team led by Dr. Jacques Galipeau of the JGH Lady Davis Institute and McGill's Faculty of Medicine. The results were published August 9 in the prestigious journal Nature Medicine.
GIFT15 is composed of two proteins, GSM-CSF and interleukin-15, fused together artificially in the lab. Under normal circumstances, the individual proteins usually act to stimulate the immune system, but in their fused form, the equation reverses itself.

A caveat: this appears to be an early-stage treatment that may not reverse existing damage to the nerves.