Lab Allergies Force Some Scientists To Take Cover Or Change Careers

Doctors warn researchers not to ignore adverse reactions to animals and other menacing specimens SAN DIEGO--Who would have thought that a rabbit could send a scientist to the emergency room? Or that butterfly scales would force an entomologist to wonder about his future as a scientist? Or that a Nobel laureate could be seized by a sneezing fit brought on by the subject of her award-winning work? The truth is, it's actually quite common for scientists to suffer allergic reactions to their own research specimens, according to Lanny J. Rosenwasser, a Denver physician and immunologist. This is especially so when lab animals are involved. Rosenwasser estimates that anyone handling laboratory animals has a 25 to 35 percent chance of developing an allergy to that creature, whether it be a cockroach, mouse, rabbit, or squirrel monkey. The reactions can be sudden and severe, forcing the scientists to don face masks and protective clothing, or they can develop gradually over time. In some cases, researchers eventually have been forced to abandon their areas of study altogether. As common and potentially dangerous as these allergies are, however, the problem has not yet attracted much concern in the scientific community. "I suppose this is because it is not seen as a major health problem," says Rosenwasser, the head of allergy and immunology research at the National Jewish Center for Immunologic and Respiratory Medicine in Denver. Rosenwasser's work on the matter has been funded in part by the Division of Allergy, Immunology, and Research Resources at the National Institutes of Health's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). But Robert Goldstein, the division's acting director, acknowledges that the plight of scientists isn't high on his organ-ization's list of priorities. "There are few studies on the allergies of scientists because research can't concentrate on one group of victims," says Goldstein. "It is a numbers game. There are thousands of kids with asthma, which is also the leading reason that children miss school. It is hard for me to get [worked] up for a scientist who has a reaction to rats. Besides, a lot of the basic work we do on allergies is relevant to what happens to scientists." Despite the paucity of data on the subject, one fact seems clear: the rashes, sniffles, or worse should not be ignored. Even if there is only a remote chance that these symptoms will develop, precautions should be taken. Some scientists prone to allergies "are like a time bomb waiting to go off," warns Robert Hamburger, a physician and allergy specialist in San Diego who has treated about eight scientists with this problem during the past decade. He and others suggest that scientists take precautions such as wearing protective garb and avoiding animal dander. But he warns that such measures may not eliminate the problem, and that scientists need to remain vigilant against the possibility of an allergic reaction. Such reactions can occur at any time during one's career. San Diego physician Virgil Woods was struck after spending three months doing immunology research on guinea pigs at the NIH in Bethesda, Md. Barbara Mc-Clintock, the 88-year-old Nobel laureate and famed maize geneticist, developed her allergy to corn flowers in the 1940s, shortly after coming to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and 40 years before she earned her Nobel Prize. Insect ecologist Orley Taylor of the University of Kansas contracted his allergies over the course of a decade while he was a graduate student investigating the mating habits of sulfur butterflies. When Woods began his research, he gave short shrift to the idea of taking protective measures. "In ret-rospect," he says, "I wish I had paid more attention to the dangers." In 1976, Woods, who now treats and studies arthritic diseases at the University of California, San Diego, was doing histocompatibility studies on T-cells. The work required his lab to kill, shave, and remove the lymph glands of several guinea pigs each day. "There was always fur all over the room," he recalls. "We were being rather cavalier about it; we'd dig the fur out of our noses and go back to work." But then he began noticing he was short of breath after bicycling to work. "I was just blue [from lack of oxygen]. I would have to sit at my desk to catch my breath," he says. Not yet 30 years old, he feared he had heart disease. Only after the attacks began occurring more frequently, even when he had not been exercising, did he go to a doctor and find out that he was having an allergic asthmatic reaction. Now he wears a full-face mask, complete with air filters. Other scientists who have developed reactions to mammals they work with have taken similar precautions. Ronald Schwartz, an intramural scientist at NIAID, has re- sorted to wearing similar attire. So has Sharon Vanderlip, an Oregon veterinarian who used to work with the UC-San Diego scientists. In fact, Vanderlip was so allergic to rabbits that she had to wear a full bodysuit as well as a respirator mask. It's not just furry animals that cause problems, either. McClintock, who earned the Nobel in 1983 for studies showing that genes in corn jump from one chromosome to another, is allergic to her research subject as well. According to Mc- Clintock, the problem lies not in the kernel but in what she calls the flower, that brownish cluster at the base of the kernel that gets stuck between teeth when popcorn is chewed. "She realized that she had the allergy shortly after she came here," says Susan Cooper, a spokesperson for Cold Spring Harbor lab and a longtime friend of McClintock, who doesn't give interviews. "The flowers would be pulverized [by the grinding action of the kernels] in the barrels used to store the corn kernels that she grew and studied." Ever since then, McClintock has tried to minimize her exposure to these flowers. For Taylor, it was working with the microscopic butterfly scales that made him wheeze. During his graduate student days from 1962 to 1969 at the University of Connecticut, Taylor was never far from a butterfly. From June through August, he and his colleagues roamed southwestern Arizona, collecting Calias butterfly pupae by the thousands in the desert's irrigated alfalfa fields. They spent the rest of the year raising the butterflies in large indoor cages, "looking for the visual cues used in mate selection," says Taylor. "Beginning in 1964, I lived in an environment with these butterflies on a continuous basis," he recalls. "We were doing mating studies; moving the wings of the butterflies. The rooms were covered with the colored scales from the wings. The scales were so small they looked like dust. "By 1968, I started getting the sniffles all the time. I had no idea an allergy was developing." Four years later, tests showed that his runny nose was due to the scales. "I started taking steroids," he says, to control the allergic symptoms. "Finally, on a 1973 trip to Arizona, I had a full-blown asthma attack. I thought I was going to die," the insect ecologist says. "I said to myself, `I can't do this anymore.' I was 35 years old. I was sleeping sitting up on a cot outdoors, and I was taking prednisone every other day." Fortunately for Taylor, another area of study beckoned. At that time, there was growing interest in the Africanized "killer" bees that were beginning to move north from Brazil. So Taylor decided to study those insects. "Emotionally it was a very uncertain time," he recalls. "I wasn't certain I could switch research subjects. Fortunately, I knew a lot about bees and was able to make the transition fairly easily." Taylor is now one of the nation's experts on these bees. And so far he has not suffered any allergic reaction to them. Others were not so lucky, and have been unable to keep up their research. Vanderlip, who once had an allergic reaction at a lecture hall in which a rabbit demonstration had taken place two hours earlier, says she became so sensitive to rabbits that she eventually gave up working with research animals. Hamburger recalls treating a researcher who nearly went into anaphylactic shock, an often severe and sometimes fatal systemic reaction to an allergen. This investigator had worked with rabbits for three years, then returned a year later for one full day of experiments. His colleagues had to take him to the emergency room. Rosenwasser has found that the allergen tends not to be the fur itself, but the proteins from the animal's tissues. Last year he published an article about what causes allergic reactions to rodents (Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 83: 945-54, May 1989). In mice and rats, that protein comes from the liver and is excreted in urine. The urine dries out on the hairs, which, when they fall out, release dander and the allergen into the air. In cats, the culprit comes from saliva. By licking themselves, the cats coat their fur with this protein. Much less is known about the allergens produced in rabbits or in monkeys. Some scientists are more prone to developing allergies than others, says Hamburger. They have a genetic inclination to react to constant exposure to allergens because their bodies have higher levels of immunoglobulin E, the antibody that is the immune system's major weapon in fighting parasitic infections but which also causes allergic reactions. People with higher levels of this antibody tend to be more allergic and become sensitized over time to a particular allergen. For Larry Gustafson, who supervises the animal facilities at UC-San Diego, squirrel monkeys are the culprit. Over the five years he worked with them he developed a few mild symptoms. Then one day his eyes swelled shut and he had a lot of trouble breathing. "The first time this happens, it's pretty scary," Gustafson says. "I'm fine around other types of monkeys or baboons, but the minute I'm around a squirrel monkey I have a reaction." Not every researcher can avoid the problem as easily as Gustafson has. For most of them the obvious solution--switching fields--is not an alternative they're willing to take. Resigned to living with allergies, they have become very creative in finding ways to cope. NIH's Schwartz dons a full-face mask, with filters for breathing and a glass window for vision, whenever he works with rats. He acknowledges that the gear makes his research more cumbersome, but he says that it has led to some lighter moments as well. "You can't communicate with regular facial expressions when you're wearing this," he says. "But you don't want people to think that you're being rude by ignoring them. So when I walk down the hall I make exaggerated expressions and grimaces to acknowledge what people are saying to me. It looks pretty weird, but what can I do?" And Woods says that as long as there is something scientists with such allergies can do, they ought not to worry about appearances or inconvenience. "I think it is quite reasonable for anyone handling [material and rodents] to wear a respirator, gloves, or whatever is necessary to prevent an allergic reaction," Woods says. Rex Dalton is a science writer based in San Diego.

Lab Allergies Force Some Scientists To Take Cover Or Change Careers

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