ACS News Service Weekly PressPac -- Dec. 20, 2006

The U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its counterpart in Canada have a legal limit of 20 micrograms per kilogram for aflatoxin in pet food. "Wild bird feed was found to be the most contaminated among different types of pet foods in several surveys, possibly due to the use of corn, nuts, and seeds as significant ingredients," the researchers said. "Up to one-fourth of the wild bird feed samples were contaminated with more than 100 micrograms of aflatoxin. This presents a potential health threat to the birds."

Among commercial dog and cat foods, the percentage of samples positive for aflatoxin varied from study to study, the researchers found. However, even the positive samples generally had levels of aflatoxin below the FDA limit.

ARTICLE #1 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
"Mycotoxins in Pet Food: A Review on Worldwide Prevalence and Prevention Strategies"

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ARTICLE #2 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Toward pinpointing the location of bacterial infections
Journal of the American Chemical Society

In an advance in the emerging field of bacterial imaging, scientists are reporting development of a method for identifying specific sites of localized bacterial infections in living animals. Bradley D. Smith at the University of Notre Dame and colleagues describe the method in a report scheduled for the Jan. 10 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a weekly publication.

The researchers previously discovered fluorescent molecular probes containing zinc that could be used to discriminate between common pathogenic bacteria -- such as E. coli and Staphylococcus aureus -- and mammalian cells. In new research, they report using the probes to pinpoint the sites of staph infections in living laboratory mice. In everyday medicine, physicians may have difficulty distinguishing localized bacterial infections from sites of sterile inflammation.