A unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two. […] Research at the University of California, San Francisco, had already identified the fungus as part of the problem. And several RNA-based viruses had been detected as well. But the Army/Montana team, using a new software system developed by the military for analyzing proteins, uncovered a new DNA-based virus, and established a linkage to the fungus, called N. ceranae.

The big breakthrough here was identifying the virus using the Army’s new software.  In combination with the fungus, the new virus – dubbed IIV – was able to wipe out bee hives with 100% efficacy.  Scientists are still not completely sure the sequence of events or even why this started happening to American honeybees and not Australian variants, for example.  But this research is a major breakthrough for an industry that is responsible for pollinating most of the food plants we eat.

Some background on CCD: This issue has now been with us for a number of years.  Starting in the winter of 2006-2007, beehive keepers started to notice an increasing number of bees simply fly away from their hives and die.  The problem has continued through the 2009 season with little success in identifying what was happening.

We have seen theories ranging from an increase in electromagnetic pollution affecting the bee’s navigational abilities, to increased pesticide exposure for the bees,  exposure to GMO flower nectar that was supposedly interfering with their biological system (somehow) and some argued it was a milieu of all these factors.  The virus + fungus research we have here is by far the most convincing argument to date.

The Science

This latest study was published in the open access journal PLoS ONE, which means we get to read what the findings say!

The scientists used bee proteins from the initial 2007 outbreak, an additional 2009 outbreak in Florida, unaffected Australian bees,  and even had a control group of bees from Montana which showed no CCD characteristics.

The findings show IIV in over 75% of all the bees but that it didn’t cause a major problem unless it was mixed with the fungi from the genus Nosema.

The researchers then took young bees whose fed was inoculated with IIV + Nosema fungus, just IIV and just the fungus and watched them.  They found the combination of the two was a complete knockout, taking down 100% of the newly emerged bees tested.  Researchers also showed that bees could still be able to survive a Nosema infection and survive but with IIV, they are overcome.

How all of this comes together in nature is a still a mystery to be unraveled in future studies but it is clear from this study that IIV discovery is a huge step forward in turning the corner on this problem.

Niacin, Vitamin B3

I know this information is already about a year out of date but I thought it might be worth republishing (as I just ran into this article and study this last weekend.) At the 2009 meeting of the American Heart Association, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that niacin (vitamin B3) treatments worked better than the Merck prescription drug Zetia at reducing the size of arterial blockages in the neck. Quoted from the New York Times who covered the story fairly well:

For patients taking a statin to control high cholesterol, adding an old standby drug, niacin, was superior in reducing buildup in the carotid artery to adding Zetia, a newer drug that reduces bad cholesterol, according to a new study.

The small study, with only 208 patients, has attracted outsize attention because the researchers did a head-to-head comparison of niacin and Zetia, which has been heavily marketed.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Zetia in 2002 to lower bad cholesterol, a risk factor for heart disease. But the drug has not yet proved to have a longer-term clinical benefit in reducing heart attacks and deaths. Merck, the maker of the drug, is conducting a clinical trial on that issue involving up to 18,000 patients.

The headline jumps out because a measly vitamin that has been available since humans existed appears to do more for the cardioprotection than Merck’s newest drug. But lets dig a little deeper here and keep a good head about you as we dig in here:

1) The study showed that niacin was more effective solely at preventing plaques from forming in the carotid artery which runs up from the aorta into your neck. While blockages here matter, this artery is much larger than the the coronary arterials. Blockages in the coronaries cause heart attacks by depriving the heart’s ventricles of blood. It would logically follow that other arteries besides the carotid would remain less clogged based on the study but that was not proven here.

2) Zetia did lower LDL cholesterol a significant amount – about 20%. But this reduction has a very interesting side effect: it made the arterial plaque worse. From the NEJM study:

As compared with ezetimibe, niacin had greater efficacy regarding the change in mean carotid intima–media thickness over 14 months (P=0.003), leading to significant reduction of both mean (P=0.001) and maximal carotid intima–media thickness (P≤0.001 for all comparisons). Paradoxically, greater reductions in the LDL cholesterol level in association with ezetimibe were significantly associated with an increase in the carotid intima–media thickness (R=–0.31, P<0.001)

If we translate that bold part into english: Zetia lowered LDL but that made the artery plaque bigger. The scientists did not go into greater detail here and all the study participants had heart disease, so it is hard to draw conclusions here, but this finding may mean Zetia is doing more harm than good. Even more broadly, it brings into question the idea of blanket lowering LDL cholesterol dogma that is the foundation of most heart disease protocols.

3) This study is flawed because it did not use a placebo group and there was no mention of the study being double blinded (that is where neither the patients nor the scientists know whom is receiving which treatment).

4) The form of niacin used in this study was not the OTC Vitamin B3 Niacin but rather an extended release Rx version called Niaspan. So, of course, the kicker from the Times story hits hard:

Niaspan is made by Abbott Laboratories, which financed the study.

Some final thoughts:

The findings are significant but not terribly meaningful – this was a small study that did not have the proper rigor to demonstrably usher in a new paradigm, not to mention the findings conveniently coincide with the pharmaceutical company who funded the study. But it did show Abbott’s Niacin-based drug beats Merck’s Zetia. It would be interesting to see if, instead of using Abbott’s time release formula, there was a side-by-side comparison of what 2X/day niacin supplement, in all its $4.99/bottle-at-walmart-glory, might do next to the $100+/bottle of miracle drug Zetia, and even Abbott’s Niaspan. Some placebo controls would be nice as well.

The irony to this whole story is that regular old niacin can be found in the very products cardiologists tell you stay away from: beer, pork, fish and -above all – chicken. This situation seems just too convenient to be an accident. Just putting an idea out there – maybe the body evolved to use niacin as a natural cholesterol balance against cholesterol heavy foods like beef and chicken, considering the body would find niacin wherever it would find cholesterol in these meat products.

Any thoughts on that?

Neurophotonics, up close

Researchers at SMU are working with DARPA (the US hyper-advanced military research group that initially developed the internet) to create an artificial fiber optic signaling system that will directly interface with your body’s central nervous system.  This technology, called neurophotonics, would allow bidirectional communication to and from the brain, giving amputees with prosthetic arms and legs the ability to feel heat, cold and pain in those artificial extremities.  From the article:

The goal of the Neurophotonics Research Center is to develop a link compatible with living tissue that will connect powerful computer technologies to the human nervous system through hundreds or even thousands of sensors embedded in a single fiber.

Unlike experimental electronic nerve interfaces made of metal, fiber optic technology would not be rejected or destroyed by the body’s immune system.

“Enhancing human performance with modern digital technologies is one of the great frontiers in engineering,” said Christensen. “Providing this kind of port to the nervous system will enable not only realistic prosthetic limbs, but also can be applied to treat spinal cord injuries and an array of neurological disorders.”

This program follows in the footsteps of DARPA’s ‘Revolutionizing Prosthetics’ Program, whose goal was to have neuronal-controlled prosthetic arm to market before 2010.  According to their website, those advanced prosthetics are already in testing but they are nowhere near as advanced as this project.  A true fiber backbone for the body would act much like our spinal cords currently do, only faster.

The Future

Neurophotonics is an interesting field just in its infancy and it is going head to head with genetic engineering.  It will be interesting to see if this neurophotonic method, where structures we engineer are grafted into humans, takes hold or if genetic engineering, where genes are manipulated to bring similar results, will win out.  Another research company called Neuralstem is attempting to reconnect spinal cords damaged spinal cords from Lou Gerhig’s Disease with genetically engineered stem cells.

Stem cells have come under intense pressure as they are harvested from fetuses (sometimes).  Using them for research purposes was outright banned earlier this year in the US by a court ruling but the ban has since been lifted.  This neurophotonic method may win out because it is less controversial but first, both methods have to prove successful in further clinical trials.

Coburn’s office confirmed to POLITICO on Tuesday that the Republican is objecting to moving forward with the bill on the grounds that it will add to the burgeoning federal budget. Coburn has become the GOP champion for demanding that legislation be fully paid for, staging or threatening filibusters this year on legislation ranging from war spending to unemployment benefits.

Coburn’s analysis of the bill seems a bit off.  A lot has been made of how the bill will effect farmers precisely because it puts so much of the cost of the new legislation on those who are being inspected (see our past coverage).  In our 2009 analysis of the house bill, we found that the FDA would earn roughly $200 million dollars a year from inspection fees, which would largely offset the cost of the legislation, although not entirely.

Coburn’s stand seems mostly obstructionist ahead of 2010 congressional races.  There is a significant groundswell against further deficit spending, especially in rural America, but there is also significant unease about the food supply in the wake of the peanut butter and spinach scares of the last five years.  The delicate balance of fees in this food safety bill was ironed out over the course of two years and it doesn’t make sense for Coburn to stand in the way of it now.  Except for the fact that he is a junior senator running for his reelection in a couple months…

And remember, this is a bipartisan bill.  These are easier to pass.

UPDATE: A just before the weekend note from Senate Majority Leader Henry Reid: Coburn’s position means the bill will likely not be taken up before the election in November.  What a coincidence…

Now, after decades of debate, the Food and Drug Administration appears poised to issue its strongest guidelines on animal antibiotics yet, intended to reduce what it calls a clear risk to human health. They would end farm uses of the drugs simply to promote faster animal growth and call for tighter oversight by veterinarians.

The agency’s final version is expected within months, and comes at a time when animal confinement methods, safety monitoring and other aspects of so-called factory farming are also under sharp attack. The federal proposal has struck a nerve among major livestock producers, who argue that a direct link between farms and human illness has not been proved. The producers are vigorously opposing it even as many medical and health experts call it too timid.

Scores of scientific groups, including the American Medical Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, are calling for even stronger action that would bar most uses of key antibiotics in healthy animals, including use for disease prevention, as with Mr. Rowles’s piglets. Such a bill is gaining traction in Congress.

In case you are not familiar with the situation, often pigs, chickens and even cows are put into caged areas much to small for any living creature move around freely.  These confinement animal feeding operations (CAFOs) result in large amounts of animal waste that creates an ideal breeding ground for bacterial infection among the animals.  Farmers are aware of this and supplement their animal feeds with a range of antibiotics.

But the point here is more nuanced.  The battle over the line for antibiotic use on the farm center around their use as a growth promotion agent in animals.  Many CAFO farmers have learned that antibiotic cocktails cause their chicken to grow faster, their pigs to grow larger, etc.  Ag-centric scholarly journals have dubbed these agents ‘antibiotic growth promoters’ (AGPs) and they are subject of the FDA’s scrutiny.  Here is a good review of how they have been used:

Public health officials note that antibiotic resistance has grown by this abundant use of antibiotics.  The use is so abundant that is far outpaces the amount of antibiotics used by human beings.  According the Union of Concerned Scientists – a reputable NGO – non-therapeutic use of antibiotics in livestock represents over 70% of the total amount of antibiotics created in the US.  The FDA is listening to those worries, which have been ignored up until now, with new ears.

Imagine if you had to live your life in a subway car with 300 of your closest friends.  It wouldn’t take long before somebody got the sniffles and, pretty soon, the whole car would be sick.  That’s the basic scenario at the CAFO that farmers are worried about.  Public health officials are worried about what happens if those resistant strains of bacteria get out of the CAFO and jump into humans.

This new FDA rule will not be an easy sell.  The agriculture and public health industries are extremely well connected on Capitol Hill and I’m not sure who’s dollar bills will look better to elected officials. I see major resistance shaping the end product here.

Building a Better Animal

The story briefly highlights the work of Cecil Forsberg a biologist from the University of Guelph in Ontario, who wanted to spare the environment the impact of pig farming.  The problem with swine CAFOs is they produce huge amounts of waste that are stored in so called ‘swine lagoons‘.  These open air pig waste ponds have been the subject of much debate, with the EPA studying them for polluting ground water with estrogenic compounds while the hog farming capital of the world, North Carolina, has gone so far as to ban their new construction outright.  But the real problem with the pig waste is what happens once it leaves the lagoon.

Much of swine effluent is sold as a spray on fertilizer for crops near the hog farms because of it’s high NPK values (ag talk for Nitrogen-Phosphorous-Potassium levels, critical to grow American corn and soy agronomic crops).  This concept makes logical sense and could even promote regional foodshed growth as a cheap form of nutrient dense fertilizer that comes from a natural source.  The problem is the volume of waste from giant hog farms far outstrips the local farmland’s ability to use it.  Most notable, is that phosphorous runoff from the pig waste finds its way into sensitive waterways where it promotes runaway algae growth that chokes off aquatic life from the oxygen it needs to survive, a process known as eutrophication.

Domesticated pigs eat a largely vegetarian diet of grain and soy that contains prodigious amounts of phytate, a complex compound their bodies cannot normally break down, causing these high phosphorous levels in the waste fertilizer.  Pigs still need phosphorous to make DNA so farmers solve this issue by buying free phosphorous for their pigs or supplementing with an enzyme called, appropriately enough, phytase.  But what if that was all unecessary?  What if the pig made phytase itself?

Enter Enviropig.

Forsberg, et al, have genetically engineered these Yorkshire pigs to produce phytase in their salivary glands, which breaks down the phytate into usable phosphorous for the pig.  The result?  30-65% reduction in phosphorous excretions. Enviropigs cost more than traditional breeds but, according to the Popsci article, save farmers $1.75 annually in supplementation costs – a big savings in the world of livestock production.  In a CAFO with 100K head of swine (which unfortunately aren’t going anywhere anytime soon), this would be a huge win for the marine environment, currently being decimated by many forces.  The pig awaits USDA and Health Canada approval as it has now successfully been breed into an 8th generation with no problems.

Ick, Ehh, or Yay?

GMO animals represent a promising new way to deal with the industrial scale of modern agriculture issues.  We say promising because, like always with genetic modification, the ideas are great but the implementation has left something to be desired.  It is heartening to see that the Enviropig was developed at the university level and not the corporate level, avoiding such pitfalls as the infamous terminator genes in some Monsanto GMO products.

It still strikes us as counterintuitive to create such a technology when simply lowering the density of swine at CAFOs would achieve the same effect.  Better yet, we could require CAFOs to treat swine waste much as we require cities to treat human waste before releasing it back into the environment.  Nevertheless, this is just one of many GMO animals to come and its a promising start.

From the article (emphasis mine):

The bid to rename the sweetener by the Corn Refiners Association comes as Americans’ concerns about health and obesity have sent consumption of high fructose corn syrup, used in soft drinks but also in bread, cereal and other foods, to a 20-year low.

The group applied Tuesday to the Food and Drug Administration to get the “corn sugar” name approved for use on food labels. They hope a new name will ease confusion about about the sweetener. Some people think it is more harmful or more likely to make them obese than sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence

The Corn Refiners are in the right to say the science is not settled but there are quite a few problems under investigation. One study links HFCS to fatty liver disease while NHANES data, which is the largest epidemiological evaluation of America undertaken by the NIH every 4-5 years, showed an association between HFCS and kidney disease. And lets not forget, HFCS was found to be laced with mercury last year.

From a biochemical perspective fructose gets routed through a whole different series of tubes in the body, namely the liver. It’s not different than table sugar but the name HFCS implies it is higher in fructose content than other sugars. Maybe that unfair enough for the FDA to grant the name change. I doubt it though.

There are a bevy of corn sugars in the food supply already, HFCS, corn syrup, dextrose, xylitol, crystalline fructose…the list goes on. Why does HFCS get the blanket terminology while the others have to be more specific? Outside of marketing, there is no rationale but that hasn’t stopped the FDA from granting other name changes before.

The Corn Refiners Association already has http://cornsugar.com live online and an ad campaign replete with pretty corn fields.

My favorite line in the article from cleveland.com?

The American Medical Association says there’s not enough evidence yet to restrict the use of high fructose corn syrup, although it wants more research.

I guess diabetes and obesity epidemics are not the AMA’s primary concern…

*Note – this article is a sampling of the style to be featured in the coming news posts of the new Nutrition Wonderland v2.0! Get excited people, its nearly here…

NW 2.0′s major initiative is to create more of a blog-centric portion of the site that better explains what is going on in the medical, nutrition and agricultural worlds.  Everyone has repeatedly told me there is such a need for an informed voice that shows the interplay between these issues that it does not make sense to ignore it any longer.  Currently, we only do this type of coverage on our Twitter page, but based on it’s substantial following, there appears to be a big need for more of this.

We will continue to offer you our feature stories at their 2-4X/month interval but the newer blog stories will roll at a much faster rate – think 4-5/day – and be much shorter in length.  This way we can highlight what’s important and use our feature stories to educate around those issues.  There are numerous other enhancements coming but this is the centerpiece of the changes.  (If this has you in huff right now, rest assured, we will offer a new set of RSS feeds if you want to opt out of receiving the new information and just stick to the old feature stories.)

My work on this whole project has slowed significantly over the summer as I pursued an interesting opportunity of sorts with the Rodale Institute up in Pennsylvania and as I work towards a masters in nutritional biochemistry.  Both opportunities have opened a whole new series of doors that will only serve to strengthen this site going forward.

September will see great progress – I will be sharing it with all of you shortly.

Thanks,
-j