The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 274 No 7350 p622
21 May 2005

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Risk from old strain of flu more
Taking a look at “merry springtide’s harbinger” more
Art in a Mendip cave more
Mopping up arsenic more

Risk from old strain of flu

There is anxiety over the threat of an influenza epidemic since the news that thousands of diagnostic laboratories requesting cultures of Asian flu have been accidentally provided with the H2N2 strain of influenza A rather than one of the currently circulating viruses (H3N2 and H1N1). The H2N2 strain has not been encountered in humans since 1968 and people born after that year will have little, if any, immunity to it.

The World Health Organization is due to issue regulations aimed at tightening the safety grip on laboratories handling this virus, according to a report in Science for 22 April. It will ask for laboratories with culture collections to remove H2N2 from their catalogues while the issue is debated.

Plans are being drawn up to reduce the risk of escape from the thousands of laboratories that currently hold samples, and remaining stocks may be rounded up and sternly dealt with. The prospect of regulating or destroying the virus completely over the next one or two centuries is under consideration.

The samples of the H2N2 strain were issued by the College of American Pathologists in late 2004 and early 2005 to 3,747 laboratories in 18 countries, including 61 laboratories outside the US and Canada. It is not clear how the college managed to distribute his strain rather than a current influenza A strain.

When it swept across the globe half a century ago the H2N2 strain produced relatively mild pandemics. Between one and two million people, mostly elderly, died — not because of the strain’s virulence but because they lacked any immunity to it.

If H2N2 reappeared in the human population today no-one is sure what effect it might have. If H2N2 was established together with other strains of the virus, the production of suitable vaccines would become difficult.

Meanwhile, H2N2 is stored in hundreds or thousands of laboratories world-wide. Laboratory accidents aside, some experts believe that natural cycling of H2N2 is bound to produce another pandemic in the human population at some future time.

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Taking a look at “merry springtide’s harbinger”

It has been a remarkable springtime for the primroses in my part of the country. This familiar plant was called prima rosa because it was regarded as the first flower of the year, though it has a long blooming season in sheltered hedge banks and is particularly associated with the advent of spring and Easter celebrations.

The custom of picking bunches to give to parents and to decorate churches goes well into the past. White, red or mauve variants of the blossoms are common and occasionally the flower head takes a fantastic shape. It is well recognised that the blooms take two distinct forms, the “pin eyed” and the “thrum eyed”, according to the position of the stigma and anthers, and these occur on separate plants.

Oddly enough, primroses are associated in folklore with poultry keeping. In Norfolk it was thought that if fewer than 13 primrose stalks are brought into a home the hatching rate of any poultry would be reduced; if 13 or more, hatching would be normal.

In some places, primroses blooming in winter foretold a death in the family, and to bring a single bloom indoors was also unlucky. To bring flowers into an office or shop as a May Day decoration was once a prevalent custom. It was thought that planting a plant upside down would result in a red flower.

In accordance with the Doctrine of Signatures (which suggests that a plant’s shape, color, taste, smell or other properties give a hint as to its use in healing), it was once common to drink a concoction of primrose roots to cure yellow jaundice. The leaves were heated with lard to make an ointment for ringworm. From the time of Pliny the Elder the plant was regarded as a remedy for muscular rheumatism, paralytic conditions and gout. Decoctions and tinctures of the whole plant are sedative and have been drunk to guard against hysterical disorders. Gerard maintained that primrose tea, drunk in the month of May, protected against the “frenzy”. The powdered root, however, is emetic.

The primrose suffers from time to time from excessive gathering but, at present, it seems to be holding its own.

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Art in a Mendip cave

My first experience of stormy weather in a gorge of the magnificent Mendip hills persuaded me to seek shelter in Burrington Combe within the entrance to Aveline’s Hole. This seemed a formidable cave entrance and had something sinister about it, deterring me from venturing too far into its depths. The cave was discovered in 1797 after investigators removed piles of debris which had been washed in from the gorge for centuries from the low entrance arch. The large number of human remains since discovered therein indicate that the cave was used as a burial ground during the early Mesolithic period.

The May/June issue of Current Archaeology reports that members of the University of Bristol Speleological Society, during a systematic search of caves in the Bristol area, came across a panel of engravings in Aveline’s Hole. The panel is 25cm wide by 20cm high and shows two rows of crosses, six in the top row and four below, apparently made by a stone edge rather than a metal blade. The engravings are calculated to be of Mesolithic date or older and are probably of the same age as the burials in the cave. Abstract designs are characteristic of Mesolithic rather than Upper Palaeolithic sites. Steps have been taken to ensure the survival of the geometrical designs by installing a gate to cut off that part of the cavern containing them. It is believed that a similar pattern of incisions may be present in sites in Cheddar Gorge.

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Mopping up arsenic

Some plants are adept at taking up different metals from their environment. An example that may prove life-saving has been reported in Chemistry World for May. Scientists at De Montfort University, Leicester, have discovered that dried roots of water hyacinth, which thrives in arsenic-rich landscapes, can rapidly reduce arsenical levels in contaminated waters, bringing them below the World Health Organizsation guideline of less than 0.01mg per litre.

In parts of the developing world where drinking water is derived from rocky structures that contain heavy arsenical content, the lives of millions of people are placed in jeopardy, with serious risk of skin cancers, damage to the nervous system and miscarriages during childbirth. Natural means of dealing with the problem are welcomed. In Bangladesh, for example, the water hyacinth flourishes in lakes and rivers. This inspired research, and when the local contaminated water was treated with the roots of the plant it was found that arsenic was completely removed in a matter of minutes. At the same time a way appeared for disposing of a plant locally regarded as a pest in watercourses. It is hoped that water hyacinth roots can be incorporated into filtration systems to purify them for both drinking and irrigation purposes.