{"id":402904,"date":"2010-03-08T08:07:35","date_gmt":"2010-03-08T13:07:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthportal.org\/news\/?p=3176"},"modified":"2010-03-08T08:07:35","modified_gmt":"2010-03-08T13:07:35","slug":"sea-lion-cancer-cause-remains-a-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/402904","title":{"rendered":"Sea lion cancer cause remains a mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Greenwire<\/a>: The cause of a metastatic cancer that was first found to be killing California sea lions 14 years ago remains a mystery to scientists who are trying to pinpoint the source of the illness.<\/p>\n

In 1996, Frances Gulland, the director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito alongside colleagues at the University of California, Davis, reported that 18 percent of deaths in stranded adult sea lions were the result of tumors in the reproductive and urinary tracts.<\/p>\n

“It’s such an aggressive cancer, and it’s so unusual to see such a high prevalence of cancer in a wild population,” Gulland said. “That suggests that there’s some carcinogen in the ocean that could be affecting these animals.”<\/p>\n

After years of examination, the researchers think that environmental contaminants in the ocean may be at fault — potentially interacting with a herpes virus in the sea lions and triggering tumors.<\/p>\n

In an average year, the Marine Mammal Center reports that it sees 15 to 20 California sea lions with cancer. It has not seen the same syndrome in other seals.<\/p>\n

Data on the cancer is scarce: There has been little monitoring for cancer in wild animals, so it is unknown how much of the general California sea lion population has tumors or if the current rate is higher than before. There is no diagnostic test for the disease, so the researchers gather much of their information from post-mortem examinations.<\/p>\n

Scientists are now planning a large study of 300 sea lions to study if the virus, genetics or PCBs stored in the animals’ blubber from consumed contaminated fish are most strongly tied to cancer (Ingfei Chen, New York Times<\/em><\/a>, March 4). – DFM<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Greenwire: The cause of a metastatic cancer that was first found to be killing California sea lions 14 years ago remains a mystery to scientists who are trying to pinpoint the source of the illness. In 1996, Frances Gulland, the director of veterinary science at the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito alongside colleagues at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4055,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-402904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4055"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402904"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402904\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}