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Problems force shutdown at disease lab

http://news.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=fee6b3293a684d92

By Marty Schladen
The Daily News

Published January 25, 2008
GALVESTON — A laboratory used by researchers to study highly infectious organisms is being shut down at the University of Texas Medical Branch after an internal door failed twice.

That door was in a lab containing mice that had been exposed to the virus that causes bird flu. It was between a chemical shower sceintists must walk through before entering the lab, and the lab itself.

Both diseases are highly deadly in humans, but no people were in the two rooms connected by the door when it failed, said university spokeswoman Chris Comer.

In addition, the disease-causing bugs were behind barriers of their own within the lab, so none escaped, Comer said.

“It’s containment within containment within containment and negative air pressure throughout,” Comer said.

Even so, the Robert E. Shope lab is being shut down as a precaution, Comer said.

In addition to the experiments connected by the failed door, there are six other ongoing experiments being conducted in the laboratory.

All will be wrapped up today and the entire laboratory will be fumigated Saturday, Comer said.

Any further experiments will be delayed until the cause of the internal door’s failure is discovered and corrected. Comer said representatives of its manufacturer are being flown in from Germany to investigate. Medical branch engineers believe a defective switching device was responsible for the problem, Comer said.

The door opened twice: at 3 a.m. and again at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Nobody had been in either of the labs it connected since 5 p.m. Tuesday, Comer said.

The Shope lab is a Biolevel Safety Containment 4 laboratory. Scientists study highly infectious organisms in the secure labs.

The organisms under study in the labs separated by the failed door are both potentially extremely dangerous.

In one, about 10 mice had been infected with the H5N1 influenza virus. The bug, which initially attacks the respiratory system, has killed multitudes of birds, pigs and other animals, primarily in the Far East. It also has killed hundreds of humans, but it doesn’t pass easily between them.

Public health officials are very worried that the virus will change genetically so that it is easily communicable between humans and cause a flu pandemic like the one in 1918. That outbreak is estimated to have killed between 50 and 100 million people worldwide.

Comer, of the medical branch, emphasized that neither pathogen escaped its containment. The medical branch plans to post details of that containment and its safety procedures on the Web today.



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