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Volume 2 No 30; 25 July 2008

 

Nanotoxicology research centre to be established at Chilton

The Health Protection Agency's Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards (CRCE) at Chilton, Oxfordshire, is to be the site of a new centre for experimental toxicology research examining possible health effects of human exposure to nanoparticles: the National Nanotoxicology Research Centre (NNRC). The Agency is collaborating with five United Kingdom universities [1] and the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Toxicology Unit to develop the centre and its research programme. The Agency is adapting its existing aerosol inhalation research facilities, at a cost of over £300,000, to allow a programme of experimental work on nanomaterials.

Knowledge of the possible interactions between nanomaterials – those of dimensions measured in nanometers (0.000001 millimetres) – and the human body is developing rapidly.  NNRC will focus, initially, on the physical chemistry of nanoparticles and the behaviour of nanomaterials that enter the body via the lung and skin.  State-of-the-art methods for producing aerosols of nanomaterials and measuring their properties, such as size distribution and concentration in air, will be developed and subsequent work will examine biological pathways taken by nanomaterials within the body.

A CRCE paper presented to the HPA Board in June described some of the industrial and toxicological developments underpinning the new centre's creation [2]. On the one hand, the CRCE paper explains, nanotechnology is likely to be one of the most important technological developments of the present century, yielding materials with physico-chemical properties that are valuable in electronics, in opto-electronics, in imaging systems used for medical diagnostic work, in cosmetics and in food preparations. While questions about the safety of these materials has led to the rapid growth of the new discipline of nanotoxicology, “… nanomaterials do not have entirely new toxicological properties,” the paper points out. “The key discoveries [of nanotoxicology research] have been that nanomaterials may reach parts of the body inaccessible to larger particles and that they tend to be more active than larger particles when activity is expressed on a ‘per unit mass' basis.”

On the other hand, “[T]he problem is not quite as simple as this”, the paper states. “The effort needed to characterize adequately nanomaterials under investigation and to identify the most appropriate measurement to express dose should not be underestimated. … [N]ano-materials may be able to gain access to parts of the body which larger particles cannot reach and thus might produce novel effects”. Experimental work involving injection of carbon nano-tubes into the peritoneal cavity of rats, for example, has already given rise to speculation that long, thin, insoluble carbon nano-tubes that are biopersistant may have toxicological properties similar to those of asbestos fibres, the CRCE paper notes.

A programme of international collaborative work on the safety of manufactured nanomaterials, being carried out as part of the OECD Chemicals Programme [3], is being coordinated in the UK by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with input from other agencies including the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the Environment Agency (EA) and the HPA.

References

1. The universities of Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Imperial College and King's College London.

2. Nanotoxicology Research at HPA Chilton, downloadable at: http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1213083209055.

3. See: http://www.oecd.org/document/36/0,3343,en_2649_34269_38829732_1_1_1_1,00.html

Fifth report on antimicrobial resistance

The Health Protection Agency has published its fifth report providing a detailed overview of antimicrobial resistance in a range of pathogens (bacteria, viruses, and protozoa) of public health importance for the year covering 2007 [1]. Antimicrobial Resistance and Prescribing in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2008 also includes, for the first time, community antimicrobial prescribing data.

The majority of the data presented in this report relate to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, although some data from other European countries are included reflecting the participation of the HPA in the European Antimicrobial Resistance Surveillance Scheme (EARSS). Although this report focuses on data collected during 2007, where possible, trend data over a longer period of time are also presented in order to put the most recent data into context.

Reference

1. HPA. Antimicrobial Resistance and Prescribing in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, 2008. London: Health Protection Agency, 2008. Available at: http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAweb&HPAwebStandard/HPAweb_C/1216798080755

Pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV) uptake in over-65-year-olds

Results of the fifth annual PPV uptake survey in the elderly [1] have shown that, in most PCTs, high levels of coverage have been achieved. The overall uptake of PPV ever received is now 69% in all those 65 years and over. It is 77.3% amongst 75-79-year-olds.

The survey undertaken by the HPA on behalf of the Department of Health (DH) has been calculating the uptake of the 23-valent pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (which protects against more than 90% of the serotypes that cause serious pneumococcal disease in the UK) since the Chief Medical Officer recommended that all over-65-year-olds should receive it, in 2003.

The fifth annual survey calculated the proportion of the relevant age group in England that received the vaccine both between 1 April 2007 to 31 March 2008, and at anytime up to 31 March 2008. Since 2004/05 data has been collected using a DH web-based reporting system known as the Health Protection Informatics (HPI) website, which allows GP practices and their respective PCTs to upload data on-line.

References

1. HPA. Annual Pneumococcal Polysaccharide Vaccine Uptake Report in 65 years old and over for England, available at: http://www.immunisation.nhs.uk/files/HPA_pnuemoReport_June08.pdf