60 Seconds

60 SECONDS

Schizophrenia drug for kids

On 22 August the US Food and

Drug Administration approved

risperidone – or Risperdal – for the

treatment of schizophrenia in

adolescents aged 13 to 17, and for the

short-term treatment of bipolar

disorder in children and adolescents

aged 10 to 17. It is the first drug

approved to treat schizophrenia in

American adolescents. Risperidone is

already approved for use in adults.

Gene therapy not to blame

A woman who died after being

injected with a genetically modified

virus to treat her arthritis suffered a

massive fungal infection, suggesting

that her immune system had been

compromised. The finding shifts

suspicion away from the gene

therapy treatment, and towards the

combination of immunosuppressant

drugs that 36-year-old Jolee Mohr of

Illinois was receiving at the same time

to fight her arthritis.

H5N1 returns to Europe

More than 160,000 birds have been

culled in Bavaria, Germany, after

an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu was

confirmed at a poultry farm on

25 August. The virus was also found

in wild birds in France and Germany

earlier this summer.

Davids vs Goliaths

A group of 48 of the least-developed

countries banded together at a UN

meeting on Monday to call on India

and China to reduce their carbon

dioxide emissions. The meeting, in

Vienna, Austria, was seen as a stepping

stone to finding a replacement for the

Kyoto protocol, which expires in 2012.

Buried alive

A health worker in Papua New

Guinea has told AFP that it is common

practice for HIV-positive people to be

buried alive there, and that the spread

of the disease is being blamed on

women. The UN says the country is

facing an AIDS catastrophe akin to that

in sub-Saharan Africa.

in colonies, where disease would

spread rapidly.

Jorge Hernandez and colleagues

at the University of Kalmar in

Sweden discovered the E. coli strain

in faecal swabs from fur seal pups

near the Chilean research station

on Livingston Island (Polar Biology,

DOI: 10.1007/s00300-007-0282-2).

The bug has never before been

found in seals. The same team has

also found strains of Salmonella

and Campylobacter that cause less

virulent human gut infections in

wildlife near science stations.

Meanwhile, specially equipped

vacuum cleaners are to be used in

the coming Antarctic summer to

sweep visitors’ clothing for bigger

invaders such as insect eggs.

LEGISLATION may no longer

be required to save the world’s

whales. Market forces could

do the job instead.

In 2006, Iceland controversially

announced it would no longer

respect an international ban on

commercial hunting that had

been in place since 1986. However,

in a remarkable volte-face last

week, the country’s fisheries

minister indicated it may cease

this year’s commercial hunt.

“The whaling industry has

to obey the market. If there is

no profitability, there is no

foundation for resuming with

the killing of whales,” Einar

Guofinnsson told Reuters news

agency on 24 August. “There

is no reason to continue

commercial whaling if there is

no demand for the product.”

So far this year, Iceland has

killed seven minke whales out

of a quota of 30 and seven fin

whales out of a quota of nine.

Yet Guofinnsson says the slack

demand for whale meat and

products means it makes no sense

to issue new quotas when the

present quota period expires

on 31 August. Part of the reason

for the limited demand is that

Iceland currently does not have

a licence to export whale products

to Japan, one of the largest

markets for whale meat.

IT IS a hole that could hardly

be hidden by moving the sofa.

Radio astronomers have found a

gigantic void in the universe,

which at nearly a billion light

years across is the biggest ever

seen. Apparently empty of both

normal matter and dark matter,

the finding challenges theories of

large-scale structure formation.

Lawrence Rudnick and

colleagues at the University of

Minnesota in Minneapolis were

studying data from a survey

carried out by the Very Large Array

radio telescope in New Mexico –

in particular a “cold spot” in the

map of the cosmic microwave

background, or CMB. In this spot,

which lies in the direction of the

constellation Eridanus, the CMB

photons are colder than expected.

Rudnick’s team saw few or no

radio sources within the region –

indicating a void nearly a billion

light years in diameter. The lack

of radio sources means that there

must be no galaxies or star

clusters in this volume. Rudnick

says that the CMB photons are

cold because they have had to

travel through this empty space.

“The finding challenges theories of large-scale structure formation”

It’s not cast-iron proof that high-fructose

corn syrup causes diabetes, but new

evidence suggests we should think twice

about using it to sweeten soft drinks.

Chi-Tang Ho at Rutgers University

in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and

his colleagues found that adding the

syrup to fizzy drinks makes them up to

10 times richer in harmful carbonyl

compounds – elevated in people with

diabetes and blamed for causing

diabetic complications such as foot

ulcers and eye and nerve damage –

than fizzy drinks containing cane sugar.

The most harmful compound, called

methylglyoxal, is known to damage

cells directly. “The link between

methylglyoxal and diabetic complications

is well documented,” says Ho, whose

team found carbonyl compounds in

11 popular brands of soft drink

sweetened with the syrup.

High-fructose corn syrup is popular

in the US, where import tariffs make

cane sugar relatively expensive. It is

made by treating corn starch with

enzymes that transform some of the

glucose into fructose. Ho says these free-

floating monosaccharides can undergo

the so-called Maillard reaction, which

converts them into carbonyl compounds.

By contrast, cane sugar consists almost

entirely of pure sucrose, a disaccharide.

While Ho stresses that consuming

carbonyl compounds has not been

shown to cause diabetes, he urges

a switch away from the syrups as a

precaution. The results were presented

at a meeting of the American Chemical

Society in Boston last week.

SYRUP’S BITTER TWIST

STON

E/GE

TTY

–The wrong kind of sweetener?–

No taste for whale

Great big nothing

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