Research links nanobacteria to disease
nanobacteria - tiny RNA-based organisms that form microscopic
mineral structures that have been blamed for causing calcified
deposits in diseases such as atherosclerosis and kidney stones -
has been the source of considerable debate and controversy.
Now a new study conducted by researchers from the University Hospital in Vienna, Austria, and published in the journal Acta Pathologica, Microbiologica at Immunologica Scandinavica claims that nanobacteria may be involved in the formation of microcalcifications known as psammoma bodies that are found in ovarian cancers.
They claim to have identified nanobacteria in seven microcalcified specimens by immunohistochemical staining, transmission electron microscopy, ELISA and infrared spectroscopy. Control cases of ovarian adenocarcinomas without microcalcifications were negative for nanobacteria.
The Finnish scientists who originally described nanobacteria, Olavi Kajander and Neva Ciftcioglu of the University of Kuopio, originally claimed that the organisms were based on RNA. They reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that nanobacteria are the smallest known self-replicating, cell-walled bacteria, ranging from 20 to 200nm in size, or between 1/100th to 1/1000th the size of normal bacteria.
Kajander and Ciftcioglu claimed to have found the organisms in human and animal blood, urine and saliva, and cultured them. Nanobacteria, they suggested, are found within deposits of apatite, a calcium- and phosphate-containing mineral found in teeth and bone. Moreover, they showed that the calcification process could be interrupted using antibiotics, including tetracycline.
However, their work was later duplicated by scientists at the US National Institutes of Health who made identical observations but interpreted them differently. They concluded that the 'biomineralisation' was caused by the nonliving, nucleating activities of self-propagating microcrystalline centres, which form macromolecules of calcium carbonate phosphate apatite.
Moreover, the RNA sequences identified by the Finnish researchers were identified as belonging instead to an environmental microorganism, Phyllobacterium mysinacearum, a known contaminant of culture media and laboratory reagents that has not been linked to calcification.
Kajander and others working on nanobacteria have suggested that, alive or not, they may be implicated in the pathogenesis of certain diseases and warrant further scientific investigation.
Meanwhile, the credibility of the research has also not been helped by a rash of products, some based on the calcium chelating compound EDTA, that have emerged in the wake of the research and are often sold with the unsubstantiated claim that they are effective treatments for atherosclerosis.
