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Copyright 1998 Stuart News Company

The Stuart News/Port St. Lucie News (Stuart,FL)

March 30, 1998, Monday

SECTION: Local; Pg. C1

LENGTH: 1203 words

HEADLINE: STATES JOIN FORCES IN FISH PROBE

BYLINE: Debi Pelletier of the News staff

BODY:

Troubled Waters

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working to gather information on algae implicated in fish kills. "A fish school comes by and all of a sudden you have a toxic bloom. We need to be working on what triggers toxicity in this organism." -Karen Steidinger of Marine Research Institute

STUART - Florida and five other states, along with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are working together to collect data on how microorganisms implicated in recent fish kills on the Treasure Coast might affect human health.

Scientists expect another outbreak of fish deaths when the rainy season begins in June, and they hope to learn more about the algae Pfiesteria piscicida and its relatives. One of them, Cryptoperidiniopsis, has been singled out as the culprit behind the lesion-riddled fish found in recent weeks in the St. Lucie River and Indian River Lagoon.

"What we're trying to do is improve the size of the studies and get some baseline data prior to people being exposed to Pfiesteria," said the CDC's Dr. Michael McGeehin.

The CDC wants to test people who have been exposed to determine whether memory and reasoning are affected, he said.

So far, symptoms of exposure to Pfiesteria and its cousins include skin rashes, upper respiratory difficulties and memory loss. But blisters in or on the mouth, accompanied by a fever, do not follow the pattern reported from Pfiesteria outbreaks elsewhere, McGeehin said.

The blister symptoms were reported to the Martin County Health Department last week by a man who developed a large sore on his lip after catching diseased mullet in the Indian River.

"We know to look for memory loss, confusion and some other neurocognitive effects," McGeehin said from Atlanta on Friday.

Those symptoms were found in a study of 13 watermen after a massive fish kill in the Chesapeake Bay area.

But McGeehin said the study was too small to "answer many questions" and that it was based on people's recollections after the event.

The CDC's study is funded on a year-to-year basis by Congress. McGeehin said he hopes the project will continue for three to five years.

"I don't know whether Congress will appropriate money for us for all that period of time, but certainly I don't think the answers are going to be arrived at in just one year," he said.

A key question is how many kinds of organisms such as Pfiesteria exist.

"I have no earthly idea, and I don't think anybody else does, either," McGeehin said. "I think it just depends on the length of time we wait before they isolate all of them."

Karen Steidinger of the Marine Research Institute in St. Petersburg said she has found 10 Pfiesteria-complex organisms in Florida, two of which can be toxic to fish. A third toxic cousin, Pfiesteria piscicida, has not been found in Florida.

The organisms are dinoflagellates, a class of algae that is responsible for the red tides that occasionally menace the state's marine life. They are found in brackish water with salinity of about 15 parts per thousand but can tolerate higher levels. They consume other algae and bacteria instead of relying on photosynthesis for their food.

And they need fish to become toxic.

"These things are out there," Steidinger said. "A fish school comes by and all of a sudden you have a toxic bloom. We need to be working on what triggers toxicity in this organism."

Steidinger said there are more than 85 toxic microalgae in the world, and more than 60 of them are dinoflagellates, many of which produce toxins. That's why it's important to isolate the toxins in Pfiesteria and Cryptoperidiniopsis, she said. The agents produced by the algae might be fatal to fish but not to humans.

Joann Burkholder, an associate professor of botany at North Carolina State University, said Cryptoperidiniopsis looks and acts a lot like piscicida, in which she has identified 24 life cycle stages. She said Cryptoperidiniopsis has "a very similar life cycle, lots of very similar-looking stages" and attacks fish in similar ways.

She thinks it has similar ramifications for human health.

Burkholder was exposed to Pfiesteria piscicida about five years ago. Since then, she has suffered 10 bouts of pneumonia and has problems with her memory and ability to learn, she said. Her research associate, Howard Glasgow, was the hardest hit, she said.

"He recovered his ability to remember and learn within about three months," Burkholder said. "Howard and I both know there's little things about my own ability to remember and so forth, and his as well, that we compensate for, but we test within normal range."

Scientists at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration in Charleston, S.C., said they're close to isolating the toxins in piscicida and have begun tests with rats. Dr. John Ramsdell, the chief of the coastal research branch, acknowledged it will be some time before the same is done with Cryptoperidiniopsis.

"What we want to do is to be able to determine whether or not we can measure the toxin in the body fluids of animals so we'll be able to confirm exposure in humans," Ramsdell said.

Ramsdell and his associates used a gene-splicing technique to develop a

biological bloodhound that can sniff out suspected toxins in the bloodstream.

Those bloodhounds, called reporter-gene assays, have been successful in the

laboratory, but a real-world test is needed, Ramsdell said.

The only way to find out, he said, is by trying it during an outbreak.

"That's what we're planning to do this season, and we're very well integrated with a variety of agencies, state and federal, to put this into action this year and to see how it performs," he said.

His colleague, chemist Pete Moeller, said he was "very close" to isolating and identifying one of the Pfiesteria toxins, but he was not ready to discuss his findings.

"We have elected not to go public with that until it's complete," Moeller said from his lab. "It's one thing for me to isolate a toxic substance from an algae, but it's another to go the next step, which has to be done. And that's to literally prove that this is the toxin that's causing the damage."

The health effects reported in Maryland have not been observed in Florida, but state and county health officials aren't taking chances. Martin County health officials will be out Tuesday to take water samples from popular swimming spots, said Valerie Gryniuk, the county's public health administrator.

And the department wants to start cataloging information from people who think they might have been exposed to something in the water.

Gryniuk said they'll want to know what the symptoms were, "if they were fishing in any particular place, if they were swimming in water, where and when they were swimming," and whether they sought treatment by a physician.

But the county health department hasn't received information from the CDC or state health officials about what symptoms to look for, Gryniuk said.

"I think if we're running a health department down here, they should share that information," she said. "We're not supposed to be isolated. We're supposed to be part of the bigger picture."

LOAD-DATE: April 2, 1998