had to pull the blockbuster arthritis drug from the market in 2004, after five years of sales.
In 2007 it agreed to pay $4. 85 billion to settle nearly 27,000 lawsuits that claimed the medicine had caused heart attacks and strokes.
Anti-HIV gel fails An antiretroviral gel that seemed able to prevent sexual transmission of HIV to uninfected women has failed in a follow-up study.
The Microbicide Trials Network said on 25 november that it would drop the use of vaginal tenofovir gel from the VOICE study involving 5, 029 HIV-negative women in South africa,
Zimbabwe and Uganda after a routine data review found that it was no better than placebo at preventing HIV.
2010), the gel had cut the incidence of HIV by up to 54%.%Trials of tenofovir tablets in the VOICE study have failed also (see Nature 478,10-11;
Fish significantly lower the risk of rice sheath blast disease and reduce the amount of weeds and harmful pests such as the rice planthopper.
and warnings of death and disease every time they pull out a packet of cigarettes. But from December 2012, the warnings will be bigger, more gruesome and on a monochrome paper backing.
In its Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 20111, the World health organization provides statistics from multiple countries showing that packet warnings,
The chief executive of the nongovernmental cancer-control organization Cancer Council Australia, Ian Olver, says that the fact that the tobacco industry is opposed vehemently to the legislation is a good indication that the industry's market research has shown also that plain packaging will reduce its customer base.
Smoking-related diseases kill around 15,000 Australians a year and a 2009 report3 by the Western Australian Cancer Council estimated that tobacco use cost Australia more than $31 billion in 2004-05.
This greatly outweighs the $5. 6 billion or so the country receives in annual tax revenue from tobacco sales.
Foremost among these is Avandia (rosiglitazone), a once-dominant diabetes drug, sales of which were banned in Europe
and restricted in the United states last year after concerns that it increased risks of heart attack and stroke.
or'orphan',diseases and two were'personalized'medicines: treatments for melanoma and lung cancer that were approved along with diagnostic tests to identify the patients that they are most likely to help.
Public integrity More US agency policies on scientific integrity seem likely to become public after John Holdren 墉 director of the White house Office of Science
would enable treatments to be personalized for patients, ushering in a new taxonomy of human disease based on molecular origins rather than on physical signs and symptoms.
Trend Watch Efforts to eradicate polio are bearing fruit in India, one of four countries (with Nigeria,
other countries in which polio still persists have had already more cases than this time last year (see chart.
Variome project A project to log all the genetic variations that cause disease in humans took a step forward last week with the launch of its Chinese arm at a meeting in Beijing.
and share it in international databases of genes and diseases. China is taking on about a quarter of the project's estimated 20
Preventing HIV Pharmaceutical firm Gilead Sciences wants to sell anti-HIV drugs to healthy people,
and Drug Administration to sell its two-in-one antiretroviral medication Truvada (emtricitabine/tenofovir disoproxil fumarate) to people not infected with HIV.
) The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, is currently working on guidelines for administering Prep
its products include biological drugs for rheumatoid arthritis and anaemia. SOURCE: GTM RES.//SEIAUS solar-energy installations spiked during the third quarter of 2011,
9 15 december 2011gene-therapy boost A gene therapy treatment for patients with the blood-clotting disorder haemophilia B has scored its first unequivocal success,
) Haemophilia B is caused by mutations in the gene that codes for the factor IX protein;
Targeting cancer Efforts to create cancer therapies tailored to a patient's genetic make-up were boosted by promising clinical-trial results reported on 7 december (J. Baselga et al.
) The trial was conducted on women with advanced forms of breast cancer that involved mutations in the HER2 gene,
which drives about 20%of breast-cancer cases. Those given the experimental monoclonal antibody pertuzumab and the widely used drug trastuzumab (Herceptin), together with chemotherapy, gained an extra 6-month lull in disease progression compared with women receiving only chemotherapy and trastuzumab.
Both antibodies target the protein affected by HER2 mutations. See go. nature. com/hwxlbd for more.
mineral-rich water once pulsed through fractures in the volcanic rock. Gypsum deposits can form in water that is much less acidic than required by the water-altered sulphate minerals previously discovered on Mars meaning that the site could have been more habitable than others explored by the rover.
Without an effective plan,"the country may sleepwalk into disaster. The study was mandated by the 2008 Climate Change Act,
owing to heat-related illness. But the most pressing risks laid out by the study concern water,
Caution urged for mutant flu workwhy would scientists deliberately create a form of the H5n1 avian influenza virus that is probably highly transmissible in humans?
whether the public-health benefits of the work outweigh the risks of a potential pandemic if the virus escaped from the lab. For the scientists who have created the mutated strains of the H5n1 virus,
Surveillance of flu viruses could, they argue, allow health organizations to monitor birds and other animals for the mutations that would provide an early warning of a pandemic
and enable authorities to act quickly to contain the virus. That claim is meeting with scepticism,
More than a dozen flu experts contacted By nature say they believe that the work opens up important vistas in basic research,
and that it sends a valuable warning about the potential for the virus to spark a human pandemic.
But they caution that virus surveillance systems are ill-equipped to detect such mutations arising in flu viruses.
who heads the University of Minnesota s Center for Infectious disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis,
which are a good proxy for how flu behaves in other mammals, including humans. All five mutations have been spotted individually although not together in wild viruses.
provided that a mechanism is established to disseminate the data to flu researchers and public-health officials on a need-to-know basis. The US government,
39 flu researchers declared a 60-day pause in the creation of lab mutant strains of the H5n1 avian flu virus. The hiatus,
Scientists contacted By nature say that basic research on such mutated strains may eventually yield insight relevant to developing pandemic countermeasures such as drugs and vaccines.
says Ilaria Capua, an animal-flu expert at the Experimental Animal health Care Institute of Venice in Legnaro, Italy."
and so give the virus fewer opportunities to evolve into a human pathogen, she says. Other scientists add that it should force governments to rethink existing vaccine technologies,
which are only capable of supplying vaccine six months after a pandemic starts, and of producing enough vaccine for a small fraction of the world population.
"In order to even consider the possibility of reducing the animal reservoir of an emerging pandemic virus,
or years after they are collected hardly the swift turnaround of a pandemic alert system.""Could we pick up a mutation in real time
and stop a pandemic? asks Capua.""Not with the surveillance we have now. Source: Genbankmoreover, if H5n1 surveillance in poultry is poor,
H5n1 infections in pigs are uncommon and cause only mild illness, creating little economic incentive to monitor them4.
Genbank contains partial sequences from just 24 pig H5n1 isolates. Yet pigs are a likely source of a human pandemic H5n1 virus
because they are susceptible to both human and avian viruses, creating opportunities for genetic reassortment in co-infected animals.
But even if a candidate pandemic H5n1 virus was detected in poultry, culling flocks to eliminate it would be no mean feat.
H5n1 is far from being the only flu virus that poses a pandemic threat. But he believes that more extensive genetic surveillance could eventually pay off."
which the mutant flu research could provide immediate public-health benefits, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases, replies:"
) Wakefield's work posited a now-discredited link between autism and the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine;
Coming up 12 january The british Medical Journal and Britain's Committee on Publication Ethics host a London meeting on how best to manage research misconduct in the United kingdom. 13 january India may have gone a year without reporting a case of polio a milestone
that could see it removed from the list of countries where the disease is still endemic. 14-16 january Russia's failed Mars mission,
which are used in humans to treat a range of infections, including pneumonia. On 4 Â January, the agency said that it would prohibit certain uses of cephalosporins in farm animals including cattle, pigs, chickens and turkeys,
because overuse of the drugs is"likely to contribute to cephalosporin-resistant strains of certain bacterial pathogens.
If cephalosporins become ineffective in treating human diseases, the FDA said, "doctors may have to use drugs that are not as effective,
or that have greater side effects. Source: National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System/FDATHE new rules, to come into effect on 5 Â April,
"If we want to protect large animals from these infections, then we have to test vaccines in them,
and reviewers considering fears about whether it could keep pathogens safely contained in the middle of prime US cattle country.
Beef producers have been alarmed particularly that the 2010 assessment put the cumulative risk of foot-and-mouth disease escaping from the NBAF over the facility s projected 50-year lifespan at 70%(see Fear factor.
The virus that causes the disease spreads quickly and would have a devastating effect on the US cattle industry
whether current disease threats justify the facility, which could cost up to $1 Â billion to build."
The site is adjacent to the KSU Biosecurity Research Institute, a BSL-3 facility that studies animal and plant pathogens.
The DHS says that the NBAF is needed to develop countermeasures against bioterrorism a threat that resonates less now than it did immediately after the anthrax attacks on the United states in 2001.
A second is the risk of animal-borne diseases spreading to humans as population growth and dispersal puts people into greater contact with wild animals.
The third is the potential for global warming to expand the range of insect-borne diseases."
"We have the capabilities to build a facility that will better prepare us in the event of some pathogen coming in.
although many of the diseases studied in Winnipeg, including the Nipah Virus, are not currently found in North america, preparedness matters."
See page 289 for more on the flu-virus debate. go. nature. com/pf7bwv20-24 february Marine scientists'responses to the Gulf of mexico oil spill in 2010 are discussed among topics at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Salt lake city, Utah
Flu surveillance lackingin addition, the surveillance is sustained typically not, but instead is ad hoc and reactive,
and is largely in response to disease outbreaks or temporary research projects. But a flu virus that emerges anywhere,
at any time, can threaten the entire planet. The Nature analysis"highlights a global problem:
lack of data, says Ian Brown, head of avian virology and mammalian influenza at the Animal health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency lab in Weybridge, UK.
Timely global surveillance of animal flu viruses is crucial not just for identifying pandemic threats,
and pig flu deposited in the US National Center for Biotechnology Information s Influenza Virus Sequence Database between 2003 and 2011.
and several large flu sequencing projects, including the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project a major initiative run by the National Institute of Allergy
and Infectious diseases (NIAID) to boost the sequencing of existing isolates. The analysis covered all subtypes of flu virus, not just H5n1.
That s important, says Malik Peiris, a flu virologist and surveillance expert at the University of Hong kong,
because"H5n1 is not the sole pandemic candidate, and low pathogenic viruses are just as likely, if not more likely,
to become pandemic. The number of avian flu sequences deposited in the database skyrocketed between 2003 and 2010,
before dropping off in 2011. The number of pig sequences deposited remained relatively flat from 2003 to 2010
before jumping dramatically in 2011. However, few contemporary data are available. The number of avian flu sequences from isolates collected in each year peaks in 2007
and plummets thereafter. The jump in the number of pig sequences also disappears (see Delayed sequencing.
Roughly 30%of the sequences are from isolates collected before 2003. The 2007 peak in avian viral sampling was largely the result of surveys of more than 100,000 wild birds to monitor for the arrival of H5n1 in the Americas1,
The Influenza Genome Sequencing Project is also helping by generating vast quantities of sequences it now accounts for half of all avian
An exception is the Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Surveillance a network created by the NIAID in 2007 to boost flu surveillance
which has a policy of releasing all sequence data within 45 days of its collection.
The two agencies responsible for monitoring disease outbreaks in animals the Food and agriculture organization (FAO) of the United nations and the World organisation for Animal health (OIE) stipulate that sequences of potentially zoonotic viruses should be deposited in public databases within 3 months
says Ilaria Capua an avian-flu researcher at the Veterinary Public health Institute in Legnaro, Italy, who champions greater availability of sequences5.
Just 7 of the 39 countries with more than 100 million poultry in 2010 collected more than 1, 000 avian flu samples between 2003 and 2011.
Surveillance of avian flu viruses is bad, but that of pig viruses is worse. Yet pigs are a serious pandemic risk:
they can be infected co with both human and avian flu strains, which means that they provide ample opportunity for gene swapping and, thereby,
the emergence of pandemic strains such as the 2009 H1n1 pandemic virus. The world is home to some 1 billion domestic pigs, almost half
of which are in China, yet only 7, 679 pig flu sequences were collected between 2003 and 2011.
Just three countries the United states, China and Hong kong  collected more than 1, 000 swine flu sequences each,
and around 200 countries collected none at all. Five of those countries-Russia Poland, the Philippines, Denmark and The netherlands are each home to more than 10 million pigs.
In pigs, flu tends to be mild, so there is little economic incentive for surveillance. Moreover, the pork industry often doesn t want the negative image of having swine flu detected in its farms.
Research teams at Hong kong University, including one led by virologist Malik Peiris, are compiling one of the world's single largest sources of pig sequences.
The pandemic risk posed by pigs has risen also since 2009. The 2009 pandemic H1n1 virus,
which is now endemic in pigs, is unusual in that it contains the triple reassortant internal gene (TRIG) cassette,
a highly conserved set of six genes that allows the virus to swap genes with flu viruses from other species much more freely than the seasonal H1n1 that circulated before 2009 (see Pandemic 2009 H1n1 virus gives wings to avian flu).
but"we are noting lots of reassortment between the pandemic virus and endemic swine viruses, says Peiris.
globally changing the swine influenza virus landscape, says Peiris.""This certainly is a source of concern for public health.
and a well-structured and hygienic farming industry inevitably have fewer flu sequences to report,
as disease levels tend to be low, says Brown. However, many of the countries that have contributed few
or no sequences have poor veterinary systems and flu-prone farming systems, such as backyard farms and mixed poultry and pig farms,
which are often close to wild ducks and other flu reservoirs.""Proper geographic representation is lacking, says van der Werf,
or report, outbreaks so that they can claim they are free of infection and so avoid trade problems.
Flu experts say that the dire state of surveillance could be turned rapidly around by, for example, creating a network of sentinel sites,
The problem is that no global body has overall responsibility for flu surveillance. The World health organization (WHO) runs a global network of labs for human flu surveillance
and selects human strains to be included in vaccines for seasonal flu. Monitoring animals falls to the FAO,
which tends to focus on food security, and the OIE, which looks mostly at animal health and trade.
which can cause kidney and liver damage and bladder cancer. Medicinal use of the herb probably explains high rates of bladder cancer in Taiwan,
according to a paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2. At least one of the four medicines that contained Aristolochia DNA also contained aristolochic acid.
which can cause severe allergic reactions. But many PLANT DNA sequences could not be pinned to individual species,
among these thousands of ingredients, there were not a few that have the potential to do more good than harm.
However, my impression is that we are a very long way from instilling proper science into this area such that patients are not at risk of either direct harm
or the indirect harm of treating serious conditions with useless supplements
Monkey genetics track social statusimagebroker/FLPAGROOMING is one way in which rhesus macaques show deference and curry favour.
potentially heightening susceptibility to disease, says Tung.""That heightened state is more damaging to be in,
One investigation, known as the Whitehall study2, found that low-ranking British civil servants suffer higher rates of illness and death than their superiors.
and is hoping to examine how social rank affects the macaques'susceptibility to infection
Million-year-old ash hints at origins of cookinggreatstock Photographic Library/Alamythe plant and animal ash was found thirty metres inside the Wonderwerk Cave beyond the reach of a lightning strike.
They also hope it will help in the development of tomatoes that can survive pests, pathogens and even climate change,
Bovine TB disguised by liver flukebovine tuberculosis (btb) could be spreading across Britain because the most widely used test for the disease is ineffective
when cattle are infected with a common liver parasite. The liver fluke Fasciola hepatica was known already to affect the standard skin test for btb,
whether the fluke stopped the disease developing or merely hid the symptoms. A study published today in Nature Communications suggests that the latter is more likely,
Researchers tested milk from dairy herds across England and Wales for antibodies against F. hepatica, an indication of infection,
If they assumed that a fluke infection inhibited btb detection, they achieved a closer match between the model and actual btb detection rates.
an infectious disease specialist at the University of Liverpool, UK, and an author of the paper, says the result helps explain why btb is still endemic across England and Wales."
questions whether the liver fluke hides infections.""Cattle carcasses are inspected in abattoirs and we would see evidence of TB in the slaughtered animals
showing that animals with preexisting tuberculosis had reduced sensitivity to the skin test when they were infected with liver fluke2.
The disease costs the UK government around £100 million (US$158 million) a year. Control relies on testing cattle for btb before they are moved between farms;
and new infection sites crop up long distances from existing hotspots. Eradicating liver fluke could increase the sensitivity of the skin test
"The unreliability allows disease to remain undetected, and badgers are blamed when infected cows are found later,
and btb causes 10%of human tuberculosis deaths in Africa.""We know that a similar immune mechanism exists in humans,
Malaria surge fearedthe war to bring malaria to heel has made slow but steady progress during the past decade,
But health officials fear that the spread of insecticide-resistant mosquitoes could bring about a resurgence of the disease.
says David Brandling-Bennett, the senior adviser for infectious diseases at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, Washington,
Such failures could reverse the recent drop in malaria mortality credited to insecticide spraying in the home and coating of bed nets,
WHOTHE WHO report says that insecticide-resistant mosquitoes already inhabit 64 Â malaria-ridden countries (see map.
To implement all of THE WHO s suggestions would cost $200 Â million on top of the $6 Â billion that THE WHO requested last year to fund existing malaria-control programmes.
director of the Global Malaria Programme at THE WHO, hopes that the report will draw more funds to the table as donors grasp the situation."
But the two largest players in malaria aid the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria,
and the US President s Malaria Initiative (PMI) have not yet pledged additional money to fight resistance.
Their spending on mosquito control is already high in 2009,39%of the Global Fund s malaria expenditures went towards insecticide-treated bed nets and household spraying,
In the meantime, health officials may be able to keep malaria at bay by swapping insecticides. The report notes that in Colombia
"In some countries, malaria control means one person sitting in one room, and he s lucky if he s got a chair,
As the United states first genetically engineered (GE) pigs with muscular dystrophy, the creatures could be used to test treatments for the disease.
But their utility will remain limited for the time being, while the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) works out how to regulate them.
and pharmaceutical laboratories, has bred so far about 275 Â pigs some with cystic fibrosis, others with heart disease, arrhythmia or cancer,
and now muscular dystrophy. Because pigs mimic these human diseases more closely than mice, they are desirable models for drug testing
and for studying the disease process. However, as the first company to seek approval for a disease model in a GE animal that could, in theory,
also be eaten, Exemplar is navigating a dimly lit regulatory path. In 2009, the company submitted its first application to the FDA for approval of its cystic fibrosis pig model."
"We don t really know what additional steps we need to do in order to get FDA approval for full commercialization,
says John Swart, president of Exemplar. Nevertheless, the company remains hopeful that its pigs will skirt the hardships that have befallen other GE animals in the pipeline.
Although animal-rights advocates may object to disease-model pigs, Swart predicts that they will avoid intense public scrutiny
disease.""The NAD process doesn t fit us real well, he says. When Swart asked the FDA how to demonstrate the requirement that his products are safe for human consumption,
But Swart points out that diseases have variable symptoms.""We don t know much about these diseases,
which is need why we a model. While the pigs plod through the process one step at a time,
a handful of investigators at US universities have begun already to study how diseases develop in the transgenic animals.
Unethical research A US court has dismissed a lawsuit by Guatemalan citizens against US officials over American researchers who intentionally infected Guatemalans with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s (see Nature 482
Mikovits theft case Chronic-fatigue-syndrome researcher Judy Mikovits is no longer facing criminal charges for stealing lab notebooks, computers and other material from her former employer, the Whittemore
Peterson Institute for Neuro-Immune Disease in Reno, Nevada. A Nevada district attorney dropped the charges last week,
although Mikovits (known for her now-retracted work linking chronic fatigue syndrome to a virus) still faces a civil suit from the institute.
Farmers say it is impossible to avoid growing GM soya because of contamination, and in April they won a challenge in the state of Rio grande do Sul,
Mercury poisoning can cause vomiting and diarrhoea and, in more extreme cases, brain or kidney damage.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of harm Peruvians are divided still over the findings. Some march through Puerto Maldonado s main plaza shouting through megaphones that mercury is killing everyone,
and mouth disease over the 50-year projected lifespan of the facility. The virus, which affects cattle
and mouth disease escaping, to 0. 11%over 50 years. Now, in its review of the revised assessment, released on 15 june,
and mouth disease, Manney sees zoonotic diseases those that can spread to humans as posing an even greater source of risk and uncertainty.
Manney s concern is echoed in the NAS's findings. From the review panel s perspective,"a valid scientific and technical risk analysis is quite possible for this facility.
"Very complex procedures are involved in dealing with zoonotic diseases, and there s no way to know what emerging diseases that the lab will be handling ten or twelve years from now and
what protocols might be required, he says.""The findings of this assessment will be incorporated into future plans
which diseases in large animals can be studied. Â"I think all of us recognize the need to advance our research
and our understanding of the diseases that affect animal populations in the United states and that could co-infect humans
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