Pentosan Research

January 7, 1999

--------------- Forwarded Story ---------------

Headline: Chemical stops scrapie, may help with CJD-research

Wire Service: RTw (Reuters World Report)

Date: Thu, Jan 7, 1999

The following news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole

or in part, without the prior written consent of Reuters Ltd.

LONDON, Jan 8 (Reuters) - British scientists said on Friday that a

chemical they have already successfully tested on mice could help in the

fight against new variant CJD, the human brain-wasting malady linked to mad

cow disease.

The researchers, from Edinburgh's Institute for Animal Health, called

for further animal experiments to establish whether pentosan polysulphate

(PS) could reduce the risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Thirty-five people in Britain have been diagnosed as having the

invariably fatal new variant CJD since scientists said in March 1996 that

they had evidence that it could be contracted by eating beef from animals

suffering from mad cow disease.

But the likely extent of the future problem is still unclear because

of the long incubation period associated with the disease.

The Edinburgh researchers injected mice with scrapie, the version of

mad cow disease which afflicts sheep, and injected PS seven hours later.

Treated with one milligram of PS, the mice injected with one strain of

scrapie were completely protected from the disease, those injected with

another strain had at least a hundredfold reduction in sensitivity to it,

and some of those injected with a third survived.

" Although direct testing of the efficacy of PS in reducing

susceptibility to variant CJD is not possible, further animal studies are

essential to examine the possible use of PS for risk reduction, " the

scientists wrote in the British medical journal The Lancet.

They noted that PS is already licensed in the United States for the

treatment of a form of cystitis.

European Union farm ministers agreed in November to lift an export ban

on British beef imposed after the new evidence of transmissibility of mad

cow disease to humans more than two years earlier.

The agreement came after Britain slaughtered thousands of cattle

judged at possible risk from the mad cow disease epidemic which was

believed to have been caused by the incorporation of sheep remains in

fodder.

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