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Worm turned
OLIVIER ASSELIN/AP/PA
60 SECONDS
Drug disapproval COULD US drug regulators be feeling the heat of government scrutiny? On 13 June, federal health advisers unanimously declined to approve a new weightloss drug because of concerns that it might cause suicidal thoughts and other psychiatric problems. In studies presented to a panel
Worm turned PREVENTION is proving better than cure yet again. The parasitic Guinea worm – which grows up to 60 centimetres long and is usually extracted painfully by hand – faces eradication by 2009. And that’s without the aid of drugs. Instead, millions of Africans broke the cycle of infection by following a global prevention campaign led by the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Guinea worms mainly infect people who drink water
“Pond caretakers prevent people with emerging worms from entering the water”
NASA
contaminated with fleas that carry the worm larvae. These grow in the body, but must re-emerge to reach water and complete their life cycle by producing more larvae. The eradication programme, started in 1980, involves villagebased surveillance to prevent the worm spreading. In Uganda, for example, elderly villagers serve as “pond caretakers”, preventing people with emerging worms from entering the water, and fetching water for them instead. “It’s a really great example of old-fashioned public health measures without the usual burden of money and drugs,” says Michele Barry at Yale University –IT, we have a problem– School of Medicine in New Haven,
www.newscientist.com
Want to get away from it all? This week, the European Space Agency said it was looking for 12 volunteer “astronauts” to live inside an isolation tank at a Moscow research institute for 17 months – with only a delayed radio link for contact with the outside world. The agency hopes to simulate what a Mars mission would feel like.
Radical bug zapper
“The drug Acomplia had twice as many psychiatric side effects as a placebo” of independent experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the drug Acomplia had twice as many psychiatric side effects as a placebo. The US House of Representatives is holding hearings on the reauthorisation of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) which may change the way new medicines are approved and subsequently monitored. Some think the FDA is being overly cautious about approving new drugs for this reason. Clifford Rosen, who chaired the panel, says that while the FDA always presents panels with evidence on drug safety, the amount for Accomplia was “a bit unusual”. “I think they’re being very cautious right now.” The FDA says the amount of evidence considered was set many years ago and not influenced by the PDUFA. The FDA is expected to make a final decision by 27 July.
Some space-time alone
UK hospitals are to start trials of a device that may reduce hospital superbugs to undetectable levels in air and on surfaces. The Air Disinfector discharges –Out, damn worm– highly reactive hydroxyl radicals which rapidly kill microbes, says its maker, Connecticut. “It will be the first Inov8 Science of Buckingham, UK. parasitic disease to be eradicated.” The disease has tumbled from Call for halal vaccines 3.5 million cases worldwide in 1986 to just 25,217 in 2006, Barry reports Muslim nations should come together in The New England Journal of to develop “halal” child vaccines, Medicine (vol 356, p 2561). She Malaysian prime minister Abdullah praises the extremely low cost of Ahmad Badawi told the Organisation of the programme. At just $225 the Islamic Conference (OIC) on 14 June. million over 20 years, it’s a fraction Although the OIC already declares most of the funding poured into major vaccines halal, Badawi says producing diseases, such as malaria. vaccines in Islamic countries might alleviate fears about contamination, such as those that triggered rejection of polio vaccines in Nigeria in 2003. “WE’RE basically the canaries – getting knocked down by the Coral border for Japan fumes first,” says Susan Michaelis, a former pilot who believes she Japanese authorities have begun was poisoned by fumes from planting baby coral on a remote Pacific leaking engine fuel while flying. atoll in an effort to hold on to the At a meeting in London on country’s southernmost territory. The 18 June, Michaelis pushed for rocky isles of Okinotori, 1700 kilometres “aerotoxic syndrome” to be south of Tokyo, give Japan resource recognised as a disease. rights inside a 200-nautical-mile The problem, says Michaelis, “exclusive economic zone”, but rising of the University of New South sea levels could soon submerge them, Wales in Sydney, Australia, comes conceding the territory to China. from the way compressed air is drawn off engines to supply the Spring-loaded spring cabins. If the seal inside the engine is not secure, oil can leak The Arctic spring now arrives up to a into the cabin, contaminating air month earlier than it did a decade ago. with tricresyl phosphate (TCP). It’s the most spectacular manifestation Michaelis’s survey of 250 pilots yet of global warming, say researchers found that 85 per cent had tracking the flowering dates of six detected the “dirty socks” smell plants, nesting times of three birds and of contaminated air, 57 per cent emergence dates of 12 arthropods in reported ill health as a result, the Zackenberg, north-east Greenland and 8 per cent had to retire on (Current Biology, vol 17, p R449). health grounds.
Poisoned pilots
23 June 2007 | NewScientist | 5
60 SECONDS
Drug disapproval COULD US drug regulators be feeling the heat of government scrutiny? On 13 June, federal health advisers unanimously declined to approve a new weightloss drug because of concerns that it might cause suicidal thoughts and other psychiatric problems. In studies presented to a panel
Worm turned PREVENTION is proving better than cure yet again. The parasitic Guinea worm – which grows up to 60 centimetres long and is usually extracted painfully by hand – faces eradication by 2009. And that’s without the aid of drugs. Instead, millions of Africans broke the cycle of infection by following a global prevention campaign led by the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Guinea worms mainly infect people who drink water
“Pond caretakers prevent people with emerging worms from entering the water”
NASA
contaminated with fleas that carry the worm larvae. These grow in the body, but must re-emerge to reach water and complete their life cycle by producing more larvae. The eradication programme, started in 1980, involves villagebased surveillance to prevent the worm spreading. In Uganda, for example, elderly villagers serve as “pond caretakers”, preventing people with emerging worms from entering the water, and fetching water for them instead. “It’s a really great example of old-fashioned public health measures without the usual burden of money and drugs,” says Michele Barry at Yale University –IT, we have a problem– School of Medicine in New Haven,
www.newscientist.com
Want to get away from it all? This week, the European Space Agency said it was looking for 12 volunteer “astronauts” to live inside an isolation tank at a Moscow research institute for 17 months – with only a delayed radio link for contact with the outside world. The agency hopes to simulate what a Mars mission would feel like.
Radical bug zapper
“The drug Acomplia had twice as many psychiatric side effects as a placebo” of independent experts convened by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the drug Acomplia had twice as many psychiatric side effects as a placebo. The US House of Representatives is holding hearings on the reauthorisation of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA) which may change the way new medicines are approved and subsequently monitored. Some think the FDA is being overly cautious about approving new drugs for this reason. Clifford Rosen, who chaired the panel, says that while the FDA always presents panels with evidence on drug safety, the amount for Accomplia was “a bit unusual”. “I think they’re being very cautious right now.” The FDA says the amount of evidence considered was set many years ago and not influenced by the PDUFA. The FDA is expected to make a final decision by 27 July.
Some space-time alone
UK hospitals are to start trials of a device that may reduce hospital superbugs to undetectable levels in air and on surfaces. The Air Disinfector discharges –Out, damn worm– highly reactive hydroxyl radicals which rapidly kill microbes, says its maker, Connecticut. “It will be the first Inov8 Science of Buckingham, UK. parasitic disease to be eradicated.” The disease has tumbled from Call for halal vaccines 3.5 million cases worldwide in 1986 to just 25,217 in 2006, Barry reports Muslim nations should come together in The New England Journal of to develop “halal” child vaccines, Medicine (vol 356, p 2561). She Malaysian prime minister Abdullah praises the extremely low cost of Ahmad Badawi told the Organisation of the programme. At just $225 the Islamic Conference (OIC) on 14 June. million over 20 years, it’s a fraction Although the OIC already declares most of the funding poured into major vaccines halal, Badawi says producing diseases, such as malaria. vaccines in Islamic countries might alleviate fears about contamination, such as those that triggered rejection of polio vaccines in Nigeria in 2003. “WE’RE basically the canaries – getting knocked down by the Coral border for Japan fumes first,” says Susan Michaelis, a former pilot who believes she Japanese authorities have begun was poisoned by fumes from planting baby coral on a remote Pacific leaking engine fuel while flying. atoll in an effort to hold on to the At a meeting in London on country’s southernmost territory. The 18 June, Michaelis pushed for rocky isles of Okinotori, 1700 kilometres “aerotoxic syndrome” to be south of Tokyo, give Japan resource recognised as a disease. rights inside a 200-nautical-mile The problem, says Michaelis, “exclusive economic zone”, but rising of the University of New South sea levels could soon submerge them, Wales in Sydney, Australia, comes conceding the territory to China. from the way compressed air is drawn off engines to supply the Spring-loaded spring cabins. If the seal inside the engine is not secure, oil can leak The Arctic spring now arrives up to a into the cabin, contaminating air month earlier than it did a decade ago. with tricresyl phosphate (TCP). It’s the most spectacular manifestation Michaelis’s survey of 250 pilots yet of global warming, say researchers found that 85 per cent had tracking the flowering dates of six detected the “dirty socks” smell plants, nesting times of three birds and of contaminated air, 57 per cent emergence dates of 12 arthropods in reported ill health as a result, the Zackenberg, north-east Greenland and 8 per cent had to retire on (Current Biology, vol 17, p R449). health grounds.
Poisoned pilots
23 June 2007 | NewScientist | 5