Drug beats botulism danger

Botulism has become less common in the UK in recent years, but still carries a high mortality rate.

One in 10 does not survive as the botulinum toxin paralyses breathing muscles.

There are concerns that it could be employed as a biological weapon, but a team of US researchers believe they have found a way to counter it.

The treatment, they say, could be mass-produced and stockpiled in case of bio-attack.

The bacteria behind botulism are found in soil, and its toxin is the most poisonous substance known to man.

It works by latching onto nerve cells and preventing the chemical that triggers movement from reaching nearby muscles.

When it paralyses the breathing muscles, artificial ventilation is needed to keep the patient alive while nerve cells regenerate.

Fashion jab

Recently, it has been employed in minute doses as "fashion drug" botox to paralyse facial muscles and get rid of wrinkles, and has other medical uses to calm conditions involving severe muscle spasms and shakes.

The team from the University of California at San Francisco involved making "antibodies" that would link onto the toxin molecule and stop it causing harm.

The three antibodies that form the treatment each join with a different part of the toxin molecule, increasing the drug's overall effectiveness.

Dr James Marks, who reported the finding to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said: "The drug neutralises the toxin better than the most potent natural immune response.

"The procedure could be scaled up to mass produce and stockpile the drug to be use to prevent or treat botulism."

Still a killer

Dr Sandra Stringer, from the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, UK, told BBC News Online that botulism was still a much-feared illness.

She said: "In the old days more than 50% of people who got it died - but mortality is still 10% even now, which is very high for food poisoning."

The heat generated by proper cooking, she said, was enough to destroy the toxin and the bacteria.

She said: "We do not get as much botulism in this country as in some other countries because we eat more manufactured food, which tends to be safer in this respect."

Other sources of botulism are injecting drug use - often drugs can be "cut" with soil to make them go further, and the bug is introduced directly under the skin by the user.

A rare form, infant botulism, also called "floppy baby syndrome", happens when bacteria, which cannot normally grow in the stomach, thrive in the gut of children under six months old.