Dps & Down

Last week, from Sweden, France and the U.S., doctors reported news of the unending fight against disease:

PAS v. TB. Tuberculosis of the intestines is one of the most feared complications of TB of the lungs. The newest hope is eight-year-old PAS (for para-amino-salicylic acid). A highly optimistic report of its use by two Swedish doctors appeared in the Swedish medical journal Laekartidningen. Drs. Bo Carstensen and Stig Sjoelin reported trying PAS on 22 men & women whose chances were "hopeless or dubious" by ordinary methods of treatment. After two to four weeks' treatment (five to 14 grams of PAS a day) all 22 were "completely or almost completely" cured of abdominal symptoms. Pain disappeared completely. The general condition of 19 improved; two became worse. One died, but even he was free from pain the last months of his life. The original TB of the lungs improved in eight patients. U.S. comment was cautious: it was "too early" to jump to conclusions.

Bright Idea for Polio. Next to a cure, what polio fighters need most is a cheap, quick test. In its early stages, infantile paralysis is hard to diagnose, because the symptoms (fever, headache, upset stomach) may be those of half a dozen childhood ailments. A new drug may seem to work wonders when all the time the patient only had grippe. A new diagnostic test on mice was reported last week in Science by Dr. Pierre R. Lepine, of the Pasteur Institute in Paris. He injects fecal material from suspected polio patients into the brains of five mice. Two days later he gives them, and five other control mice, injections of active strains of a known polio virus.

Good news for the mice is bad news for the human patients. By the tenth or eleventh day, at least four out of five of the control mice should be paralyzed or dead. But if the patient had polio, at least three out of five of the first group of mice should be alive and scampering; the human material protects them from the virus. If it did not protect them, the patient did not have polio. Said one U.S. investigator: "It's very encouraging . . . but right now it's just a bright idea."

Flu's Round. Vaccination against flu, doctors agree, cannot do anybody much harm. But does it do any good? It worked during the flu epidemics of 1943 and 1945. But it was a flop in 1947, according to a study of students at the University of Chicago. Combined influenza A and B virus vaccine was injected into 790 students; another 1,230 students were not vaccinated. During the epidemic, exactly the same percentage of each group (9.5%) came down with flu. Severity of the attack was about the same in each group; 2.5% of the vaccinated and 2.26% of the unvaccinated were sick enough to go to a hospital.

What happened between epidemics? Could the virus that caused the flu have changed, while the vaccine did not? The researchers recommended development of a vaccine with wide enough range to hit, blunderbuss fashion, any flu virus that may turn up.

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