Medicine: Capsules: Jul. 26, 1982

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NEXT, AN UNFATTENING FAT?

In diet-conscious America, when one fad falls, the next amazing shrinking cure is always on its way. And at Procter & Gamble right now they are talking about a new substance that can create a creamy-rich milkshake or a buttery spread that is not the least bit fattening. It is a zero-calorie dead ringer for dietary fat called sucrose polyester (SPE), and last week researchers at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center reported SPE's first successful test. The compound contains eight fatty acids instead of the three that make up ordinary fats. As a result, digestive enzymes cannot break it down, and it passes unaltered out of the body. In the Cincinnati study, ten chronically obese patients were fed a diet much like their usual one for 20 days and, for another 20-day period, the same diet with SPE replacing about 540 daily calories of fat. Subjects were unable to detect any difference in the taste of the food, and did not attempt to compensate for lost calories by snacking more. They lost an average of 8 Ibs. during their time on the SPE diet, and, as a bonus, their serum cholesterol levels dropped 10%. How soon will SPE be on your grocer's shelf? Not for a long time, if ever. Though no serious side effects were reported, SPE is "potent stuff," says Dr. Charles Glueck, who headed the study. The compound has been classified by the FDA as a drug. When it becomes available, several years from now, it will be sold by prescription only.

THE MICE THEY REARED

A pedigree is of more importance in the world of lab animals than it is in any royal family. When medical researchers try to unravel the secrets of the cell, essential to understanding cancer, they must be absolutely certain of the genetic "purity" of their test subjects. Thus the biological community was rocked last week by the news that a strain of albino lab mice used by cancer investigators everywhere was genetically contaminated. The tainted mice were discovered by University of Wisconsin Biologist Brenda Kahan and her colleagues while they were growing a primitive type of tumor called a teratocarcinoma. A puzzling enzyme uncharacteristic of the breed kept showing up hi the host animals, a common strain known as BALB/c. Careful genetic tests soon confirmed suspicions: the mice were not the purebreds promised by their supplier, the Massachusetts-based Charles River Breeding Laboratories, Inc. Since the company is the world's largest producer of lab animals, similar mongrels are presumably frolicking in the cages of many other research centers. And the long, tedious work of determining where they are and what experiments they compromised must now begin.