Mice

City health inspectors closed the Giant Food store in the Rotunda shopping center in North Baltimore yesterday for pest infestations, said Olivia D. Farrow, the Health Department's assistant commissioner for environmental health. "The main reason for the closure was due to a mouse infestation throughout the whole store, and they also had a fly infestation in the bakery area," she said. Farrow said health inspectors went to the supermarket, located in the 700 block of W. 40th St., yesterday in response to two separate complaints filed through the city's 311 center.

For the first time, living cells from humans have been transplanted successfully into mice, scientists reported yesterday, suggesting that it may become possible to do the opposite, using animal organs to cure human diseases.By treating the human cells, "masking" them from the mouse's immune system, Dr. Denise Faustman said, she and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston were able to implant the cells without rejection and without using drugs to suppress the rodents' normal immunity.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine ar hoping a colony of genetically altered mice will point the way toward new drugs that can prevent the brain deterioration that strikes about one-third of all AIDS patients.The mice, which number in the thousands, carry genetic material from AIDS viruses that infected the brain of a person who died a few years ago. The experiment is part of a growing field, called transgenics, in which scientists endow animals with human traits for studies that could lead to treatments or cures.

Researchers at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have identified the genetic control for hair patterning in mice. In humans, a similar gene might be responsible for the whorls and swirls that give some people effortless coiffures and others permanent cowlicks. Dr. Jeremy Nathans, a professor at the medical school, with Nini Guo and Charles Hawkins, bred mice that lacked the gene, called Frizzled6. On a normal mouse, most hair follicles point in the same direction so the hairs are parallel although, as with many mammals, mice have swirls on the chest.

Several hundred strong and multiplying all the time, a colony of mice engineered to carry a human gene for Alzheimer's disease could lead scientists to treatments for an affliction that robs people of their ability to think.Scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, who created the "transgenic mice" using a novel technique of genetic engineering, said yesterday that the rodents could show them how the disease evolves in the brain and what might be done to stop it.The brown rodents, housed in plastic cages that line the shelves of two rooms, are the latest in a string of animals at laboratories around the world that have been genetically manipulated to carry features of human diseases.

Cel-Sci Corp. said yesterday that a vaccine it is developing for herpes showed strong promise in a recent animal study.The biotechnology company, which has its research and development offices in Baltimore, said mice immunized with the vaccine recovered from herpes infections more quickly and had fewer symptoms than mice that did not get the treatment. Results of the study were presented yesterday at the 37th Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Toronto.Publicly held Cel-Sci said the vaccine is made of a portion of the herpes simplex virus and a piece of a protein that binds to disease-fighting white blood cells, called T-cells.

The federal Food and Drug Administration has ordered the Maryland Food Bank to correct conditions that led to the discovery of four live mice, three dead mice and a live bird in the food bank's large warehouse at 241 N. Franklintown Road.In a March 5 "warning letter" to the food bank, based on a random inspection Feb. 5 to 7, the FDA also said it found "evidence of rodent gnawing," some rodent droppings and food spillage.All were termed violations of food-holding provisions of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.No sanctions were ordered.

In a series of bold experiments, scientists have created laboratory mice with tiny human organ structures -- lungs, intestines, pancreases, lymph nodes, thymuses, livers and immune systems. The purpose is to study the viruses of human diseases in living human tissues.The animals, whose organ tissues are derived from those of human fetuses, provide a singular opportunity to gauge the effectiveness of various antiviral drugs. The mice have been successfully infected with the AIDS virus and with two cancer viruses that cause leukemia.

LOS ANGELES -- Lovastatin, a widely used cholesterol-lowering drug, reverses common learning disabilities in mice, offering the first hope for a treatment of the problem in humans, University of California, Los Angeles researchers reported yesterday. Three human trials in children and adults will begin at UCLA and other U.S. and European locations within weeks, said Dr. Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at UCLA and the lead author of a paper appearing in the journal Current Biology. Lovastatin, trade-named Mevacor, is one of a family of drugs known collectively as statins that have revolutionized the treatment of high cholesterol.

MOSCOW -- This city has its shortages and shortcomings but Westerners who visit other parts of the former Soviet Union have strange stories to tell.Many have to do with mice.A British traveler awoke one night in an Armenian hotel when a curtain laden with mice fell, sending many mice scampering over him. He had not complained about the lack of hot water and the intermittent electricity. But this was too much.He charged down to the front desk, where the frowning clerk couldn't imagine why a few mice had made this man so obstreperous.