MJ's Human Biology Blog

Does Running Form Affect Running Injuries?

2012-02-15T14:15:00.002-05:00

Competitive distance runners train hard, sometimes to the point of injury. Does a runner’s running form affect the likelihood of injury? In an interesting study just published online, researchers say yes – at least in terms of how the runner’s foot strikes the ground. The researchers analyzed data for mileage run, running pace, and injuries sustained by the members of Harvard University’s men’s and women’s distance running teams over a four-year period. They also videotaped each runner to determine their predominant “foot-strike style” – either heel-first or toe-first.

Nearly 3/4 of the group was injured each year. And when the researchers analyzed who was getting injured and what type of injuries were sustained, they found that the predominantly heel-strikers were twice as likely to suffer from repetitive stress injuries than were the predominantly toe-strikers. Interestingly, the type of shoe worn (well-padded versus minimal racing flats) didn’t seem to matter.

The researchers say they don’t know why the heel-strikers suffer more repetitive stress injuries, but they speculate that it may be because of a greater peak of impact energy when the heel strikes the ground first than when the toes strike first. And they’re not suggesting that heel-runners switch their running style unless they’re getting injured frequently, and then only if they’re willing to retrain slowly. After all, doing something unnatural and different could make matters worse.

State Laws Governing Cell Phone Use

2012-02-11T10:49:00.000-05:00

Want to know whether texting while driving is illegal in your home state, and if so, whether it's a primary or secondary offense? Do you know whether it’s okay to use your hand-held cell phone to make calls? Does it make a difference in your state how old you are? Go to the Governor’s Highway Safety Association’s (GHSA) website to find out.

Bird Flu Research Halted Temporarily

2012-02-08T18:10:00.002-05:00

The H5N1 virus, also known as the bird flu virus, is highly contagious and deadly in birds. On rare occasions it infects humans, where it is also deadly. What saves us from a pandemic is that it is not yet highly transmissible between humans. The big worry is that the virus will undergo a change that makes it more transmissible between humans, leading to a human pandemic.

Recently, scientists who were studying the H5N1 virus managed to modify it, making it more contagious to humans. They were surprised, in fact, with how easy it was to do. Now they have voluntarily agreed to suspend the research and to hold back some of the details of how they did it, to give the scientific community time to debate the value of the research and to discuss how to disseminate the important findings of the research without giving out too much information to the wrong people. The researchers explain their decision in a letter published in several scientific journals.

The danger of such research is that the modified virus could escape from the laboratory and infect humans. Even worse is the possibility that it could find its way into the hands of terrorists, or that publication of the details of the research would open the way for terrorists to duplicate the feat – like providing the recipe for a bomb online. On the other hand, clearly there is potential value in such research; understanding how viruses make the transition from infecting animals to infecting humans may help us identify and contain viruses that are in the process of doing so. It might even help us find ways to stop them before they make the transition.

Both points of view are valid, of course. And while there are several sides to this issue, it’s encouraging that scientists seem to be working together to come to grips with it. Both have the same goal – to protect humans from an H5N1 pandemic. The question is how best to do that.

Setback for Vaginal Gel Against HIV

2012-02-01T18:28:00.004-05:00

Last year a study reported that a vaginal gel containing 1% tenofovir (an anti-HIV drug) was partially effective in preventing HIV infection in at-risk women in Africa (see this blog Sept. 5, 2010). Researchers were particularly interested in developing a gel against HIV because it would be a prevention method controlled by women, rather than by men. The study was hailed by a breakthrough by AIDS researchers, and several large follow-up studies were undertaken to to confirm the findings.

The results have been very disappointing. One of the follow-up trials was halted recently when it became clear that the vaginal gel was not going to be effective in reducing the rate of HIV infection in what was thought to be a similar group of at-risk women. (See also the PBS report.) Researchers are scratching their heads and trying to work out the differences between this and the previous study to see if they offer any clues as to why the recent trial failed. In the meantime, another study is still ongoing.

But let's put the disappointment in perspective. This is the scientific process at work. Hypotheses are made and tested, findings repeated and confirmed (or not confirmed), hypotheses modified and tested again….its a continuous process that brings us closer to the truth through repeated success and failure, trial and error. We’ll just have to wait for the next instalment in this ongoing saga. In the meantime, don’t expect a vaginal gel against HIV infection to hit the market any time soon.

Congress Ends the Ethanol Subsidy

2012-01-25T18:17:00.002-05:00

Last month Congress ended the federal subsidy for fuel-grade ethanol made from corn, according to news reports. The original idea behind the 30-year subsidy was that ethanol would help the U.S. reduce its dependence on foreign oil. It never accomplished that. In fact, the subsidy (45 cents per gallon) cost the taxpayers 6 billion last year, driving up the price of corn feed stocks for livestock and increasing the price of many foods.

But even with the subsidy removed, there will still be ethanol in our gasoline. The federal Renewable Fuels Standard still mandates that we use 36 billion gallons of biofuels per year by 2022, compared to 7.5 billion gallons this year. And along with eliminating the subsidy for U.S. production of ethanol from corn, Congress also removed the tariff on ethanol imported from Brazil. The Brazilians make ethanol from sugarcane, which turns out to be much more energetically efficient than making ethanol from corn. So, a) We’ll still be using ethanol, and b) It’ll probably come from Brazil. So much for reducing dependence on foreign suppliers of energy…

Still in force is a $1.01 per gallon production subsidy for ethanol derived from cellulosic biomass, such as wood, grass, and waste plant materials. We can only hope that encouragement of the fledgling cellulosic biomass fuels industry will pay off better than the subsidy for corn-based ethanol ever did.

Stem Cell Therapy Trial Halted

2012-01-23T18:12:00.003-05:00

About a year and a half ago I reported on the first clinical trial of a therapy using stem cells (this blog, Aug. 1, 2010). The trial, run by Geron Corporation, was designed to treat patients suffering from spinal cord injuries with neuronal cells grown from stem cells.

This past November Geron announced that it was cancelling the clinical trial and its entire stem cell research program. In a statement, the company said only that it will “discontinue further development” of its stem cell programs in order to focus on several promising new cancer drugs. According to Geron it was a decision based on the need to save money. By abandoning its stem cell research program, Geron will lay off 66 staff members and save about $25 million a year, according to a news article in Science.

Only four spinal cord injury patients were treated before the trial was terminated.. Preliminary results showed that their conditions did not improve after treatment.

Cancellation of the trial is certainly a setback for stem-cell-derived therapies, but it is not an outright disaster. At least one other clinical trial of a stem-cell-derived therapy, for macular degeneration, is already underway at a company called Advanced Cell Technology. And it’s still possible that another company will buy Geron’s stem cell program assets, which included work-in-progress on treatments for several other diseases.

Storing Solar and Windmill Energy

2012-01-19T11:53:00.001-05:00

Both solar and windmill energy generating systems suffer from one drawback – they’re inconsistent. The biggest problem isn’t how to produce electricity from them for the power grid; it’s how to store energy from these two sources until it is needed.

The energy storage problems (and solutions) are different for solar and wind energy. Typically, solar energy systems generate heat, which powers steam turbines to produce electricity. For solar energy systems, the problem becomes how to store heat until it is needed. The current technology stores heat in tanks of molten salt heated to about 700 degrees Fahrenheit, and even solid blocks of concrete.

Windmills generate electricity directly without heat, but of course they only work when the wind is blowing. A variety of battery technologies are currently available to store excess electricity generated by windmills during peak generation periods. But so far, batteries can’t store enough energy to power a major power grid for any significant length of time. For long-term energy storage, excess electricity from windmills is used to pump water uphill to storage reservoirs. When power is needed, the water can power turbines to produce electricity. One innovative alternative to water storage is storage of compressed air in huge underground caves!

Renewable energy production and storage – no doubt we’ll hear a lot about it in the years to come. For more on this subject, see the articles on storing solar and windmill energy in the Nov. 18 issue of Science.

Stem Cell Fraud

2012-01-15T07:48:00.004-05:00

The FBI has charged four men with illegally trafficking in stem cells, according to a report in a Charleston, S.C. newspaper. Apparently, one of the men convinced birth mothers at a clinic in Del Rio Texas to donate their placentas and umbilical cords to medical research. Instead, he allegedly sold the placentas and umbilical cords to a man posing as a doctor from a laboratory in Arizona, who shipped them to a third person, a faculty member at the Medical University of South Carolina. Stem cells were harvested in South Carolina and then shipped back to Texas, where a fourth person who operated a “biotherapy clinic” allegedly convinced terminally ill patients that the stem cells would be a miracle cure for diseases such as ALS, MS, Parkinson’s disease, and cancer. The patients traveled to Mexico for the stem cell injection procedures. The four men allegedly made more than $1.5 million from the scheme.

Stem cells are being used legitimately in human clinical trials, but those trials follow FDA guidelines that include government oversight and evidence of the patients’ informed consent. That was not the case here. According to an FBI spokesman, this was “a scheme whereby the suffering and hopes of victims in extreme medical need were used and manipulated for personal profit. The predatory and opportunistic nature of the crimes alleged in this indictment mirrors images from science fiction.”

We’ve all heard of the potential of stem cells, and we all hope that some day perhaps they will be a miracle cure for certain diseases. But the hard truth is that stem cell research and especially treatment of disease with stem cells is still in its infancy. No one should be experimenting on unsuspecting patients.

Genital Herpes Vaccine Fails

2012-01-10T16:43:00.005-05:00

An experimental vaccine designed to protect against herpes simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2) has failed completely in clinical trials, according to a preview of an article in the New England Journal of Medicine this week. The study involved over 8,000 women.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1103151

HSV-2, also known as genital herpes, is transmitted via sexual contact. It causes painful blisters that may recur at various times in life after initial infection. Approximately half a million people worldwide currently are infected with genital herpes. At the moment there is no known cure for HSV-2 infection, and no other ongoing effort to find one. Genital herpes is considered to be a rather trivial disease by pharmaceutical companies because although it can cause irritating and painful blisters, it is not particularly dangerous. Given the negative result from this vaccine and several others before it, there may not be much of an effort put into finding a cure in the near future. We may just have to live with genital herpes for a while longer.

FDA Limits the Use of Cephalosporins in Animals

2012-01-07T20:00:00.002-05:00

When the FDA announced this week that it was moving to limit the use of the antibiotic cephalosporin in farm animals, it sounded like it might actually be a meaningful step toward slowing the rate of development of bacterial resistance to antibiotics. But while it may do that for cephalosporin, it is not much more than a token gesture when it comes to preventing antibiotic resistance in general.

First, the new rule only eliminates the “off-label” (unapproved) use of cephalosporins – uses that shouldn’t have been happening anyway, such as using higher than recommended doses, using cephalosporin drugs intended for humans in animals, and using cephalosporin drugs indiscriminately to prevent disease. Veterinarians are still free to prescribe cephalosporins for animals when they think the drug is needed to treat disease.

More importantly, the new rule applies only to cephalosporins, which represent less than 1% of the antibiotics used in the agricultural industry. That’s why the FDA’s new ruling is just a token gesture. The meat-producing industry uses over 29 million pounds of antibiotics per year, most of which is penicillins and tetracyclines, not cephalosporins. These two antibiotics are routinely put in animal feed and water because they prevent disease outbreaks in animals grown under (sometimes) unsanitary conditions. The result is fatter animals and fatter profits. The FDA has wanted to restrict the indiscriminate use of antibiotics in the meat industry for decades, but always runs up against the meat industry lobby.

The meat-producing industry seems to be responding to the new ruling on cephalosporins with a great big yawn. Perhaps it knows that the impact of the ruling will be minor?

To be fair, the new FDA ruling could be seen as a first step in the right direction. It would be nice to see the FDA take the next big step and limit the indiscriminate use of all antibiotics in animal feed, and not just the 1% that no one cares about. I’m betting it won’t happen until the problem of bacterial resistance to antibiotics gets much worse.

Fewer Children are Receiving Vaccinations

2012-01-06T14:50:00.002-05:00

According to a report in USA Today and elsewhere, more parents are choosing not to have their children receive their regular childhood vaccinations, even though these vaccinations are considered mandatory for attendance in school in most states. Rules for allowing exemptions differ from state to state, but generally speaking all states permit parents to opt out for specified reasons, including medical, religious, and even “philosophical” concerns. As a result, vaccination rates have declined in many Midwestern and Western states. In eight states now, over 5% of all schoolchildren have not gotten all of the vaccinations allegedly required for school attendance. The state with the most opt-outs is Alaska.

Parents’ reasons for requesting exemptions vary. Some parents are still convinced that there is a connection between vaccinations and autism, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Other parents complain about the large number of vaccinations recommended these days – up to two dozen shots by the time a child is 6 years old – saying that while some vaccinations may be important, perhaps not all of them are. And there’s a widespread distrust the motives of pharmaceutical companies, who promote the vaccines and profit from manufacturing and selling them.

Health officials are concerned that outbreaks of diseases once thought to be a thing of the past may begin to re-occur once the percentage of unvaccinated children exceeds a certain threshold. But no one can say for certain what that threshold might be. In the meantime, there are occasional outbreaks that hint at a future problem, but nothing cataclysmic yet.

My guess is that we will tolerate the current trend toward tolerance of parents who refuse to vaccinate their children until a serious outbreak occurs (if ever). After that, the states will tighten up their vaccination requirements. And perhaps that’s the way it should be, in a democracy. What do YOU think?

NTSB to the States: “Ban Texting While Driving”

2011-12-15T19:24:00.003-05:00

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has issued a strong recommendation to the states that they should ban texting while driving. The recommendation comes after a well-publicized accident last year in which a teen driver slammed into truck, causing two school buses to lose control as well. Two persons were killed (including the teen driver) and 38 school children were injured. The teen was texting at the time of the accident.

The NTSB does not have the power to require that the states ban texting; that is up to each individual state. So far, 35 states have done so, though the conditions under which a person can be cited and the penalties for an infraction vary widely.

A 2009 CBS/New York Times poll found that 97% of Americans support a ban on texting while driving. However, about half of the respondents felt that the punishment for texting while driving should be “less severe” than the punishment for drunk driving. Perhaps this is because almost half of all texting adults have texted at least once while driving, according to a 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center. It sounds like a small cry for help, doesn’t it? – “Please save me from my own bad behavior, but don’t punish me too severely!”

It would be interesting to know how much texting while driving actually declines after a state institutes a ban. My guess is that like speeding, it may depend on the perceived level of enforcement and the severity of the penalty.

The Morning-After Pill – Politics vs. Science

2011-12-10T08:30:00.001-05:00

Once again, politics appears to have trumped science.

An expert scientific panel of the FDA recommended recently that the morning-after pill, called Plan B, be made available to all women without a prescription. The FDA argues that younger women would benefit from easy access to Plan B, and that the pill is both safe and effective. But the current Health and Human Services secretary, Ms. Kathleen Sebelius, used her legal authority to overrule the FDA, saying that the drug has never been tested and proven to be safe in girls as young as 11 and that girls that age may not understand how to use the pills.

Huh? Countless drugs that have not been tested specifically in children and that can have severe side effects if misused are available over-the-counter. Besides, there’s no evidence that adolescent girls are unable to read and understand the instructions on a drug’s label. If that were true, many drugs currently available over the counter should be pulled from the shelves.

The Plan B pill has always been embroiled in politics – the politics of contraception and birth control. The Bush administration initially resisted approval of over-the-counter sales of Plan B, but then justified over-the-counter sales in 2006 by limiting sales to women 18 and older. The age was reduced to 17 in 2009 when a judge ruled that the age limitation of 18 was ruled by politics, not science.

The Health and Human Services secretary is a political appointee. President Obama later publicly backed Ms. Sebelius’s position. Is it possible that Ms. Sebelius’s decision was influenced by a desire not to anger social conservatives during an election year? You decide.

Starve Your Fat Cells, Not Yourself.

2011-12-06T17:59:00.001-05:00

The two basic ways to lose weight are to reduce your caloric intake and/or increase your caloric output (through exercise). But at some time in the future, there may be an easier way. Several news agencies (including ABC) report that researchers have found a way to starve fat cells pharmacologically with an experimental drug. The drug, called Adipocide, destroys the small blood vessels within fat, depriving fat cells of nutrients and oxygen (starving them, really) and thereby causing them to shrink and/or die.

So far, Adipotide has only been tested in mice and in monkeys. The company that has the patent on Adipocide plans to apply to the FDA for permission to test the drug in humans sometime soon. But given how long it takes to test a new drug for safety and efficacy, it will be years before Adipocide or any drug like it reaches the market.

Nevertheless, it seems like poetic justice – losing weight by starving your fat cells (the very cells that are causing your weight problems), without the feeling that you are starving yourself by dieting all the time! If it becomes possible, it would change the dieting landscape forever. Let’s wait and see.

Stretching and Exercise-Induced Muscle Soreness

2011-12-02T08:22:00.002-05:00

Previously in this blog I reported on a U.S Track and Field Association study that indicated that stretching before exercise does not decrease the risk of running-related injuries (see this blog, Sept. 8, 2010). Now a review of 12 stretching-related studies reveals that stretching before exercise does not reduce perceived muscle soreness, either, in the days following exercise.

None of the studies of the effects of stretching on exercise-induced injury or soreness are considered scientifically ideal, however. Ideally, such studies would be randomized (subjects assigned randomly to either the stretch or no-stretch group) AND double-blind (neither the investigators nor the subjects would know which group each subject was in until the study was over). Unfortunately, subjects in exercise studies always know whether they are stretching or not, and therefore a double-blind study design is impossible! It’s conceivable that subject bias about the value of stretching affected the subjects’ judgment of their own post-exercise level of soreness. Until we have a truly objective measure of “soreness”, there’s no other way to conduct such studies. It’s the best we can do for now.

But from what we can tell so far, there’s no compelling evidence that stretching before exercise is either good or bad for you. Do it (or don’t do it) as you wish.

Reference: Henschke, N. and C.C. Lin. Stretching Before and After Exercise Does Not Reduce Delayed-onset Muscle Soreness. Br. J. Sports Med. 45:1249-1250, Dec. 2011.

Science, Public Policy, and Politics

2011-11-28T15:23:00.002-05:00

Like it or not, public policies based on good science are sometimes heavily influenced by political reality. Take the case of the national standards for ozone emissions, the primary component of smog. The EPA proposed new air quality standards for ozone back in January. But in September, president Obama decided to put off acceptance of the new standards until at least after the next presidential election. The reason? Apparently, special-interest groups tied to the industry argued that meeting the proposed standards would impose financial hardships on certain industries and cost thousands of jobs.

The decision to delay the proposed new ozone air quality standards has angered president Obama’s environmentally-conscious supporters, but what can they do? With unemployment currently at 9.1%, it’s hard to argue that job creation should not be a top priority. Lobbyists for environmentally-unfriendly industries know this, of course. In Pennsylvania, where natural gas companies are itching to tap huge reserves of natural gas deep underground, the gas industry argues that EPA standards for natural gas production should be relaxed, not strengthened, because they stifle new job creation.

It’s a difficult balance. The lesson, I suppose, is that whatever you believe in strongly, you need to let your elected representatives know your views.

Limiting Global Warming - The Cancun Agreements

2011-11-19T21:21:00.003-05:00

At the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change held in Cancun in 2010, an agreed-upon shared goal should be to limit the global rise in temperature to just 2^o centigrade above preindustrial levels. It’s not going to be easy, according to the authors of a paper in Nature Climate Change this month. The authors analyzed 193 different scenarios of future changes in CO₂ concentrations in the literature and looked at how they might affect climate change. They found that achieving the target of less than a 2^o increase in global temperature will require that CO₂ emissions peak in this decade and then begin to decline by 2020.

So far, most countries aren’t taking the necessary actions to reduce their emissions enough (if at all). Unless something changes soon, CO₂ emissions will continue to rise beyond 2020 and by the end of this century the global temperature increase will exceed 2^o. How high it could go after that, and how global warming will affect life on Earth is anybody’s guess at this point. Climate models are just not good enough yet to predict Earth’s climate accurately into the next century.

Let’s hope there is not a “tipping point” in global warming….

Testing the Anthrax Vaccine in Children

2011-11-18T07:20:00.001-05:00

Adults who participate in scientific studies (to test the efficacy and safety of a vaccine, for example) sometimes do it because it might help future patients, even if they themselves are unlikely to benefit. A good example was the testing of a vaccine for anthrax; the adults who volunteered were unlikely to benefit directly since there is essentially no danger of exposure to anthrax except in the unlikely event of a terrorist attack. Ethically, it is considered acceptable to involve adults in studies that will not benefit them directly, because adults are capable of giving informed consent.

But what about children? The anthrax vaccine has never been tested in children because of an ethical dilemma – who would give informed consent? Is it right to let parents make the decision? Is a child capable of giving informed consent? On the other hand, what will happen if we don’t test the vaccine in children and there is a terrorist attack some day - would a adult dose of anthrax vaccine be appropriate for children? No one knows for sure.

Earlier this month the National Biodefense Science Board (NBSB) recommended that the anthrax vaccine be tested on children now rather than later, provided that the trial is approved by an ethics review board. The board’s argument is that we can experiment now on healthy children, or essentially run a mass experiment on children after there is a terrorist attack, when it may be too late. Of course, their agenda is to protect against a terrorist attack. It will be interesting to see what an ethics review board decides.

What do you think?

A Fight Over Regulation of E-cigarettes

2011-11-15T10:06:00.001-05:00

Remember e-cigarettes – those battery-powered cigarette substitutes that dispense nicotine vapor when the user puffs on them? (See this blog, Sept. 24, 2010). Distributors say that they are virtually free of the cancer-causing agents typically found in cigarettes. They’re legal in Europe, where studies show that they do seem to cause smokers to cut down on cigarette smoking, and that would be a good thing, supposedly. Proponents argue that they are a safer substitute for smoking to give current smokers the nicotine they crave. Opponents argue that they could encourage a whole new generation of nicotine addicts who never smoked.

Just over a year ago the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned e-cigarette manufacturers about making unsubstantiated claims, and signaled its intent to regulate e-cigarettes as “a drug or drug-delivery device”. That would have effectively blocked the importation of e-cigarettes, since they would have had to undergo extensive testing for safety and effectiveness. But that wasn’t the end of it, apparently. In January of this year a federal judge ruled that the FDA could not regulate e-cigarettes as a drug or drug-delivery device. His decision paves the way for the importation and sale of e-cigarettes, at least for now. However, the judge did leave the door open for e-cigarettes to be regulated by the FDA’s tobacco division.

Confused? I am. Simply put, the judge ruled that e-cigarettes should be lumped with cigarettes in terms of government regulation, not with drugs. Either way, the FDA seems determined to block e-cigarette sales in the U.S. Yet, a lot of people think e-cigarettes would do more good than harm.

You decide.

New Test for Down Syndrome

2011-11-11T08:51:00.004-05:00

There’s a new test for the detection of Down syndrome in fetuses. The new test examines fetal DNA using only a sample of maternal blood, making it much less risky than the current best methods, amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling. The test accurately detects over 98% of Down syndrome cases, with a false positive – incorrectly identifying normal fetuses as having Down syndrome – of only 0.2%, according to results published this month.

The test is effective as early as 10 weeks of pregnancy. That’s early enough for parents to confirm positive blood test results with amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling if necessary, and then make the decision to have an elective abortion if they choose. Not everyone is happy with that. Advocates for Down syndrome patients worry that the number of Down syndrome children could decline. And that might lead (they say) to reduced research and support for Down syndrome patients.

But wouldn’t fewer people with Down syndrome be a good thing? You decide.

Less Traumatic Heart Valve Replacement

2011-11-04T15:21:00.001-04:00

Surgery to replace a damaged heart valve is now routine and relatively safe, but it is still major surgery. The surgeon accesses the damaged heart valve by splitting the sternum and pulling the two halves of the chest wall to expose the heart. Then after stopping the heart, he/she must open up the heart itself to replace the damaged valve. Open-chest, open-heart surgery generally can’t be done safely in patients older than about 80 years of age, especially if they also have other serious medical conditions.

Now there’s hope for such patients. The FDA has just approved a heart valve that can actually be implanted without major surgery. It’s called the Sapien heart valve. In its closed position, the Sapien valve fits on a catheter that can be threaded up the aorta to the heart from the femoral artery. When the valve is properly positioned, the surgeon inflates a balloon that opens the metal scaffold structure of the valve, locking it in place!

The Sapien valve is not for everyone. It’s about $20,000 more expensive than the standard valve replacement with open-heart surgery, and it’s riskier. The normal patient who needs a heart valve replaced should still undergo the normal open-heart procedure. Still, there is now an option for a class of patients who previously were out of options.

The DEA Bans “Bath Salts” Ingredients

2011-11-01T09:56:00.001-04:00

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has placed a temporary ban on three synthetic chemicals that are ingredients in a new recreational drug mixture known to users as “bath salts” or “plant food”. The DEA’s action makes it illegal to possess or sell mephedrone, methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPV), and methylone for at least one year while the DEA studies the chemicals to see if they should be banned permanently. The DEA has the authority to do this when chemicals that have a high potential for abuse, no known medical use, and no evidence of safety.

According to users, the chemicals are thought to mimic the actions of cocaine, LSD, and MDMA. The three chemicals are being marketed as “bath salts” or “plant food” on the Web and in head shops under names like Bliss, Vanilla Sky, and Ivory Wave, at a cost of $25-$50 per 50-mg packet.

The DEA took the action because of reports of impaired perception, disorientation, paranoia, and extreme violence among users. The long-term effects of the drugs are unknown. Thirty-seven states have already taken action to curb or ban the chemicals.