SOME OF THE ON-GOING RESEARCH
Many of the symptoms of glutaraldehyde/Xray chemical exposure from p 22 are not well- researched and it is the sheer weight of numbers which has shown that these symptoms are common to cases of chemical injury. The study on respiratory effects begun by Dr Aashish Vyas, was funded by Union Carbide for a further two years to the tune of £120,000 to look at the possible more wide-ranging effects of this chemical. Dr Nair Raza will run this study from the NW Lung Centre, Manchester, England.
*Professor Claudia Miller, of the University of Texas Health Science Centre, San Antonio, has gathered data for a comparitive study of Gulf War veterans, breast implant patients, MCS patients, and the glutaraldehyde affected, to follow up the TILT theory. She is currently looking allergy, CFS, auto-immune disease, cancer, drug reactivity etc in the next generation as well, in families with more than one MCS sufferer (Update Oct 98).
*The Environmental Hypersensitivity Research Unit at the University of Toronto is also studying the etiology, diagnosis and treatment of environmental sensitivity in the hope of developing a rigorous methology for these.
*From ACTA UPDATE, No 38, Dec 1997: The Canadian Govt has funded another environmental health centre, allied with Dalhousie University... smokeless, scent free, electric heating etc... for research, diagnosis, treatment. Clinic “inundated”. The Ontario Govt began its MCS work in 1985. The Canadian govt has underway 14 research initiatives on housing for the chemically sensitive.
*Dr Les Simpson continues to look at blood samples using an electron microscope. He has a major interest in pathogenesis (the cause of the disease process). He has found that chronic disorders such as ME/CFS, MS, AIDS, arachnoiditis, SLE, OOS, fibromyalgia, Gulf War Syndrome, have increased numbers of red blood cells which are not the normal disc shape ie “Flat cells”. The altered echinocytes are stiff, move more slowly through the capillaries and have low oxygen carrying capacity, hence insufficient oxygen is delivered to various organs and feelings of tiredness. Viral infections also give rise to altered red blood cell shapes but in non-susceptible individuals these changes disappear in under two weeks. Symptomatic individuals show changes for years. About 50% of cases with ME with increased cup forms respond to injections of Vitamin B; others to evening primose oil and/or Trental. (from an OSH NZ handout and the ASAMS newsletter, Oct 1998).
At the Perioperative Nurses’ Conference, NZ, Nov 1998, Dr Tim Ewer spoke of how the red cell cup forms seen in live blood samples become chronated and link to form rouleau or “caterpiller-like” piles of coins, with longer chains in more chemically sensitised individuals. As the same time the white cells become paralysed and lose their clean-up “hoovering”-round- the-red-cells function.