Feedback: Specialists recommend government stock up on two 'dirtybomb' d

The drugs can be used to treat people contaminated with radioactive materials, but both are listed as "investigational" by the Food and Drug Administration and are not commercially available.

Currently, the Radiation Emergency Assistance Center/Training Site in Oak Ridge has the only supply of the drugs in the United States, and that supply is limited.

"We have looked at special drugs with the possibility of adding those to the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile, and we've developed a proposal on how that could be done," said Dr. Robert Ricks, a radiation biologist who directs the emergency center. The Oak Ridge proposal was submitted to the Centers for Disease Control, he said.

There are growing concerns that terrorists unable to field the technology and materials to build an atomic bomb may use explosives to blow up highly radioactive products and expose large numbers of people. These radiation-dispersal devices - so-called dirty bombs - could create panic in urban centers and put a strain on medical resources.

The National Pharmaceutical Stockpile is an evolving asset that could include a variety of more commonly available medicines and supplies needed for a mass-casualty event, Ricks said.

"It's a matter of trying to stockpile enough drugs for whatever the needs might be," he said.

DTPA (diethylene triamine penta-acetic acid) helps the body shed internal concentrations of so-called transuranic elements - such as plutonium, curium and americium. Prussian Blue (potassium ferricyanoferrate) can be used to treat people exposed to radioactive cesium and thallium.

Because the drugs are not approved for commercial sale in the United States, REACTS acquires them from a German company with FDA approval. The federally funded center uses the drugs to treat accident victims or workers exposed to the radioactive materials at Department of Energy facilities, including those in Oak Ridge.

Ricks said his group is working with FDA and the new Department of Homeland Security to get the U.S. status of the drugs changed from "investigational" to "new drug."

"That would make them more readily available to the medical community in times of need," he said.

In the current situation, U.S. physicians have to file a request with REACTS to get one of the drugs and then agree to become a co-investigator, Ricks said.

Even though DTPA has been used to treat radiation victims for nearly 50 years, it remains officially under evaluation by the FDA because there's no compelling commercial need, Ricks said.

It has been administered to about 700 people over the past half-century, he said.

Ricks said REACTS has kept DTPA on the shelf ever since the response unit was created in 1976. The Oak Ridge center began stocking Prussian Blue in 1997.

Prussian Blue was used extensively at a 1987 nuclear accident in Goiania, Brazil, where hundreds of Brazilians were contaminated with radioactive cesium from an abandoned medical-therapy source. Its effectiveness in that accident prompted REACTS to seek approval for its use.

Frank Munger can be reached at 865-482-9213 or twig1@knoxnews.infi.net.

Feedback: Specialists recommend government stock up on two 'dirtybomb' drugs