Radiation Sickness Treatment Shows Promise

In an increasingly nuclear world it is becoming more and more important to be able to deal with the consequences of inevitable radiological accidents and disasters.  A combination of drugs has recently been shown in mice to enhance survival by targeting the bacteria that would otherwise flood the bloodstream from the gut after radiation exposure.  Normally the immune system would take care of such bacteria but the immune system with its white cells primarily originating in bone marrow is severely affected by radiation.  Researchers found that these two drugs significantly improved the survival of mice after radiation exposure:

The fluoroquinolone antibiotic, a mouse version of Cipro, aims to kill any bacteria it comes across. And the protein, called BPI, mops up and latches onto bacterial endotoxin, a nasty molecule on the coats of many bacteria.

See the report on this new development at Science News .  The original research was published in the Nov. 23 issue of  Science Translational Medicine.