{"id":87310,"date":"2024-07-18T03:40:56","date_gmt":"2024-07-18T07:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/?p=87310"},"modified":"2024-07-25T08:54:34","modified_gmt":"2024-07-25T12:54:34","slug":"utoledo-leads-charge-to-understand-health-effects-of-harmful-algal-blooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/07_18_2024\/utoledo-leads-charge-to-understand-health-effects-of-harmful-algal-blooms","title":{"rendered":"UToledo Leads Charge to Understand Health Effects of Harmful Algal Blooms"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Power To Do Public Impact Research: <\/strong>Since a harmful algal bloom forced the city of Toledo to issue a \u201cDo Not Drink\u201d water advisory in 2014, UToledo has been working to protect water quality and the health of Lake Erie for the half million people in the region who depend on it for drinking water. This is the fourth in a five-part series detailing UToledo\u2019s water quality research efforts over the past decade.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The potential dangers of high-level microcystin exposure were made clear in the mid 1990s, when more than 100 dialysis patients in Brazil developed acute liver failure after being exposed to tainted water.<\/p>\n

However, there was relatively little research being done on the wider public health impact of the toxins, which are produced by blooms of blue-green algae like those that crop up on Lake Erie nearly every summer.<\/p>\n

\"A

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at UToledo are investigating how microcystin toxins, produced by blooms of blue-green algae like those that crop up on Lake Erie nearly every summer, affect individual organ systems, potential ways to test for exposure and how various routes of exposure to harmful algal toxins may impact human health.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cThis absolutely hadn\u2019t hit anybody\u2019s radar,\u201d said Dr. Joan Duggan, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at The University of Toledo. \u201cIt was in the lake, but it wasn\u2019t something most people \u2014 citizens and scientists alike \u2014 were thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n

That changed almost overnight in 2014, when a half-million people in northwest Ohio were advised not to use their tap water after high levels of the toxin were detected in both the lake and processed water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere has been an explosion of research in this area in the last decade,\u201d Duggan said, \u201cand we\u2019re just starting to get our hands around a number of critical research questions for microcystin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of those questions are being tackled by a multidisciplinary team of researchers at UToledo who are investigating how the toxins affect individual organ systems, potential ways to test for exposure and how various routes of exposure to harmful algal toxins may impact human health.<\/p>\n

The name blue-green algae is a bit of a misnomer \u2014 they actually aren\u2019t algae at all. Instead, it\u2019s a type of photosynthetic bacteria called cyanobacteria, and they\u2019re found in freshwater ecosystems around the world.<\/p>\n

Lake Erie\u2019s shallow western basin, which warms easily and has been heavily polluted by phosphorus flowing in from the Maumee River, happens to be a particularly hospitable environment for the single-celled organisms.<\/p>\n

While many types of cyanobacteria are harmless, some can release powerful toxins including microcystins.<\/p>\n

Dr. David Kennedy, a molecular biologist and associate professor of medicine at UToledo, said the 1996 incident in Brazil got a lot of people\u2019s attention and burnished microcystin\u2019s reputation as a liver toxin.<\/p>\n

That wasn\u2019t the whole story.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things we\u2019ve learned since then is that calling it a liver toxin doesn\u2019t really capture the true nature of microcystin,\u201d said Kennedy, whose research focus shifted to include investigation of adverse health effects of exposure to harmful algal bloom toxins following the Toledo water crisis. \u201cMicrocystin impacts so many things other than the liver. Our group has looked at the gut, the lungs, we\u2019re looking at the cardiovascular system, we\u2019re looking at neurological effects, we\u2019re looking at the skin. Those are definitely things that in 2014 we did not have good information on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kennedy and Dr. Steven Haller, also an associate professor of medicine, have focused on how pre-existing health conditions may make people more susceptible to harmful effects following exposure to microcystins.<\/p>\n

Their lab experiments have shown strong evidence that suggests microcystin can worsen the severity of pre-existing colitis and exacerbate lung inflammation in asthma. They\u2019ve also found that low levels of microcystin can significantly amplify non-alcoholic fatty liver disease \u2014 a condition common in individuals with diabetes.<\/p>\n

The pair also has worked with Dr. Youngwoo Seo in the College of Engineering and Dr. Jason Huntley in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology to study the potential of naturally occurring microcystin-degrading bacteria as a preventative or therapeutic solution and received a patent for a novel antibody test to confirm microcystin exposures.<\/p>\n

More recently they have turned their focus to the potential for microcystin toxins to become airborne as algae-tainted waves crash against the Lake Erie shoreline.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, a research team led by Haller and Kennedy embarked on a first-of-its kind study to measure the health effects of airborne microcystin exposure in individuals who spend significant time near Lake Erie.<\/p>\n

The Great Lakes Aerosol Monitoring Research Study<\/a>, which launched this month, will follow 200 individuals from Lucas, Ottawa and Sandusky counties over the next five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve done things in experimental models and human cell lines, which are really important, but now with this community-based health study we will hopefully get directly to questions about how this is affecting the lives of people who live or work around the lake,\u201d Haller said. \u201cWe\u2019ve made some significant findings in the lab, but this is really the next step in understanding the true impact harmful algal blooms have on human health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Duggan, whose capstone project for a master\u2019s degree in public health from Yale is focused on health effects of harmful algal blooms, said UToledo\u2019s community health study is critically important.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of what we know from patients is retrospective, and that makes it very hard to truly know what the harmful health effects are. That\u2019s why it\u2019s so important to go out and prospectively gather this data,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are absolutely, positively poised to be a leader in this area. We have the clinical expertise and the research expertise, and I think we can make a real difference in this area.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"A<\/a>

This is the fourth in a five-part series detailing UToledo\u2019s water quality research efforts over the past decade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":849,"featured_media":87314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,38,39,1,3,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/849"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87310"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87317,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87310\/revisions\/87317"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}