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Pollutant damages child immunity
This week–
SOUNDBITES
Pollutant damages child immunity MICHAEL REILLY
A BANNED pollutant may be damaging children’s immune systems before they can properly develop. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have long been known to cause a variety of illnesses, from skin irritation to cancer. Now a study suggests that the chemicals, which were commonly used in electrical equipment and heavy machinery until the 1970s, are also causing immunodeficiency in children living in the Faroe Islands. Carsten Heilmann of the National University Hospital in
Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues measured the response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines of 119 healthy Faroese children aged 18 months and 129 7-year-olds. They found that a high concentration of PCBs in the children’s blood correlated with a reduced antibody response to the vaccines. Every doubling of PCB levels reduced the diphtheria antibodies in 18-month-old children by about 25 per cent. In the group of 7-year olds, tetanus antibodies were down 16.5 per cent (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030311). PCB levels in the blood of
Drive your research ! Eurogentec - Custom Antibodies • Polyclonal Antibodies - Anti-protein antibodies - Anti-peptide antibodies - High-success Double X programmes - Phospho & Methyl specific antibodies • Monoclonal Antibodies • Related services - Peptide synthesis, ELISA-Tests - Antibody purification and labelling - Peptide design
[email protected] • www.eurogentec.com
12 | NewScientist | 26 August 2006
060826_N_p12.indd Sec1:12
Faroese people are on average 10 times as high as those of people in the rest of northern Europe, probably because their diet contains pilot whale meat, which is highly contaminated with the chemicals. Co-author Phillippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health believes that women build up PCBs throughout their lives and then pass them on to their children during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Worryingly, the effects of PCBs were still evident after seven years. That might mean PCBs have a permanent effect on the child’s immune system, says Grandjean. Exactly how PCBs affect the immune system remains unclear, though one possible explanation is that they target the thymus, the organ responsible for producing immune cells called T-cells, says Mariangela Segre of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has previously shown in mice that PCBs inhibit the ability of the thymus to produce T-cells. While the study doesn’t explain the mechanism behind the decreased antibody levels, the
“A high concentration of PCBs in the children’s blood correlated with a reduced antibody response to the vaccines” findings are alarming, Grandjean says. “This clinical documentation suggests that the whole immune function is not properly responding to foreign molecules,” he says. “This has implications for how the immune system responds to anything, whether microbes, cancer cells or parasites.” He speculates that such impairment could become clinically important when the immune system is challenged by other factors such as premature birth or chronic infection. The threat is not limited to populations in which whale meat is part of the diet. Though PCBs are now banned in most developed countries, the chemicals are still in the environment. ●
‹ The Antarctic ozone hole has not become more severe since the late 1990s, but large ozone holes are expected to occur for decades to come.› Ozone specialist Geir Braathen on a report by the World Meteorological Organization predicting that the atmosphere will take up to 15 years longer than previously expected to recover from pollution and repair the ozone hole over the southern hemisphere (Associated Press, 18 August)
‹ I would put it on the same level as seeing the face of Mohammed in a potato.› Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, on Veronica’s Veil, a piece of cloth supposedly used to mop Christ’s brow as he carried the cross. The Pope is due to view it next week (The Daily Telegraph, London, 21 August)
‹ Two fully functional penises is unheard of in even medical literature.› A surgeon from a hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India, where the planned removal of one of the penises of a businessman suffering from “penile duplication” is expected to take place (The Times of India, 19 August)
‹ What happens when we find a pluton on a pluton?› Allen Glazner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on why geologists are upset about plans to call Pluto-like planets plutons. In geology, the word is reserved for bits of molten rock that solidify underground and then surface (The New York Times, 22 August)
‹ It was like a crank call… the scientific mechanisms and principles were just bollocks.› A UK government official on being approached by Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie with a scheme to clean up nuclear waste using a mystical Kabbalah fluid that had apparently been tested in a Ukrainian lake (The Sunday Times, London, 20 August)
www.newscientist.com
22/8/06 3:45:54 pm
SOUNDBITES
Pollutant damages child immunity MICHAEL REILLY
A BANNED pollutant may be damaging children’s immune systems before they can properly develop. Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have long been known to cause a variety of illnesses, from skin irritation to cancer. Now a study suggests that the chemicals, which were commonly used in electrical equipment and heavy machinery until the 1970s, are also causing immunodeficiency in children living in the Faroe Islands. Carsten Heilmann of the National University Hospital in
Copenhagen, Denmark, and his colleagues measured the response to tetanus and diphtheria vaccines of 119 healthy Faroese children aged 18 months and 129 7-year-olds. They found that a high concentration of PCBs in the children’s blood correlated with a reduced antibody response to the vaccines. Every doubling of PCB levels reduced the diphtheria antibodies in 18-month-old children by about 25 per cent. In the group of 7-year olds, tetanus antibodies were down 16.5 per cent (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0030311). PCB levels in the blood of
Drive your research ! Eurogentec - Custom Antibodies • Polyclonal Antibodies - Anti-protein antibodies - Anti-peptide antibodies - High-success Double X programmes - Phospho & Methyl specific antibodies • Monoclonal Antibodies • Related services - Peptide synthesis, ELISA-Tests - Antibody purification and labelling - Peptide design
[email protected] • www.eurogentec.com
12 | NewScientist | 26 August 2006
060826_N_p12.indd Sec1:12
Faroese people are on average 10 times as high as those of people in the rest of northern Europe, probably because their diet contains pilot whale meat, which is highly contaminated with the chemicals. Co-author Phillippe Grandjean of the Harvard School of Public Health believes that women build up PCBs throughout their lives and then pass them on to their children during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Worryingly, the effects of PCBs were still evident after seven years. That might mean PCBs have a permanent effect on the child’s immune system, says Grandjean. Exactly how PCBs affect the immune system remains unclear, though one possible explanation is that they target the thymus, the organ responsible for producing immune cells called T-cells, says Mariangela Segre of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has previously shown in mice that PCBs inhibit the ability of the thymus to produce T-cells. While the study doesn’t explain the mechanism behind the decreased antibody levels, the
“A high concentration of PCBs in the children’s blood correlated with a reduced antibody response to the vaccines” findings are alarming, Grandjean says. “This clinical documentation suggests that the whole immune function is not properly responding to foreign molecules,” he says. “This has implications for how the immune system responds to anything, whether microbes, cancer cells or parasites.” He speculates that such impairment could become clinically important when the immune system is challenged by other factors such as premature birth or chronic infection. The threat is not limited to populations in which whale meat is part of the diet. Though PCBs are now banned in most developed countries, the chemicals are still in the environment. ●
‹ The Antarctic ozone hole has not become more severe since the late 1990s, but large ozone holes are expected to occur for decades to come.› Ozone specialist Geir Braathen on a report by the World Meteorological Organization predicting that the atmosphere will take up to 15 years longer than previously expected to recover from pollution and repair the ozone hole over the southern hemisphere (Associated Press, 18 August)
‹ I would put it on the same level as seeing the face of Mohammed in a potato.› Keith Ward, former Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford, on Veronica’s Veil, a piece of cloth supposedly used to mop Christ’s brow as he carried the cross. The Pope is due to view it next week (The Daily Telegraph, London, 21 August)
‹ Two fully functional penises is unheard of in even medical literature.› A surgeon from a hospital in Uttar Pradesh, India, where the planned removal of one of the penises of a businessman suffering from “penile duplication” is expected to take place (The Times of India, 19 August)
‹ What happens when we find a pluton on a pluton?› Allen Glazner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on why geologists are upset about plans to call Pluto-like planets plutons. In geology, the word is reserved for bits of molten rock that solidify underground and then surface (The New York Times, 22 August)
‹ It was like a crank call… the scientific mechanisms and principles were just bollocks.› A UK government official on being approached by Madonna and her husband Guy Ritchie with a scheme to clean up nuclear waste using a mystical Kabbalah fluid that had apparently been tested in a Ukrainian lake (The Sunday Times, London, 20 August)
www.newscientist.com
22/8/06 3:45:54 pm