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Abstract
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Iran's government has arrested more than 100 people that it says are responsible for an unknown sickness that has affected potentially thousands of the country's schoolgirls. Many are attributing the sickness to poisoning. As videos continue to emerge online of distressed young people being taken to clinics and hospitals, Nature spoke to toxicologists, chemical-weapons researchers, epidemiologists, political scientists and others to explore possible explanations.
What is the evidence that girls are being poisoned in schools?
Human-rights activists say one of the earliest cases reported in the media was at a school in the northern city of Qom in November 2022. Hundreds of videos have since been posted on social media of girls and young women reporting symptoms including fatigue, burning throats, nausea, headaches and numbness, sometimes experienced after smelling a variety of odours.
Iran's interior minister Ahmad Vahidi is reported to have told state media on 5 March that "suspicious samples" were being analysed in laboratories. Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei has called for a "serious probe".
Mahmoud Azimaee, a data scientist based in Toronto, Canada, has been tracking incidents from media reports and news outlets since the end of November 2022. The overwhelming majority are in girls-only high schools (where students are aged 12 to 18). There are very few reported incidents in boys-only, or mixed schools. Cases are being reported across the country, but especially in the capital Tehran and in Qom, which is a centre for the study of Islamic theology and philosophy.
According to a toxicologist with knowledge of Iran, the government and researchers are collecting data but initial analyses are not robust enough to draw conclusions. Further results are likely "in the next few weeks".
What toxic substances could be implicated?
Iran has so far not published official data other than the number of people who have fallen ill. Clinicians who have treated them are not providing public statements. This means any external interpretation of events is mostly reliant on secondary sources.
Alastair Hay, a toxicologist and chemical-weapons researcher at the University of Leeds, UK, says he has seen the results of blood tests from young people who have been hospitalized. However, it is not always possible to detect poisoning in this way, he says, because blood tests do not screen for different kinds of poison. A comprehensive toxicological screen and a representative number of cases are needed, he adds...
Language: en |