Heart drug derails algal toxin
By Janet Raloff
A drug for treating high cholesterol might someday find use relieving the debilitating symptoms of poisoning from some algal toxins, animal data suggest.
Algal toxins accumulate in fish and shellfish, which, when eaten, can cause symptoms ranging from muscular weakness and pain to death. After hearing anecdotes of physicians easing symptoms of such poisonings with the cholesterol-lowering drug cholestyramine, John S. Ramsdell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Charleston, S.C., decided to test it in mice.