diabetes fears over corn syrup in soda
TRANSCRIPT
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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