Nearly one in five high school age boys in the United States and 11 percent of school-age children over all have received a medical diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

These rates reflect a marked rise over the last decade and could fuel growing concern among many doctors that the A.D.H.D. diagnosis and its medication are overused in American children. […]

About two-thirds of those with a current diagnosis receive prescriptions for stimulants like Ritalin or Adderall, which can drastically improve the lives of those with A.D.H.D. but can also lead to addiction, anxiety and occasionally psychosis. […]

More teenagers are likely to be prescribed medication in the near future because the American Psychological Association plans to change the definition of A.D.H.D. to allow more people to receive the diagnosis and treatment. A.D.H.D. is described by most experts as resulting from abnormal chemical levels in the brain that impair a person’s impulse control and attention skills. […]

A.D.H.D. has historically been estimated to affect 3 to 7 percent of children. The disorder has no definitive test and is determined only by speaking extensively with patients, parents and teachers, and ruling out other possible causes — a subjective process that is often skipped under time constraints and pressure from parents. It is considered a chronic condition that is often carried into adulthood. […]

Fifteen percent of school-age boys have received an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, the data showed; the rate for girls was 7 percent. Diagnoses among those of high-school age — 14 to 17 — were particularly high, 10 percent for girls and 19 percent for boys. […]

The medications — primarily Adderall, Ritalin, Concerta and Vyvanse — often afford those with severe A.D.H.D. the concentration and impulse control to lead relatively normal lives. Because the pills can vastly improve focus and drive among those with perhaps only traces of the disorder, an A.D.H.D. diagnosis has become a popular shortcut to better grades, some experts said, with many students unaware of or disregarding the medication’s health risks.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

photo { Loretta Lux }

Viruses are particularly dangerous because they don’t seem to serve any useful purpose for us (unless you count “selecting the fittest humans” as a useful purpose). It is estimated that there are 10 to the 31st power viruses on this planet, compared with 10 to the 10th human beings. We are outnumbered big time. If you have trouble killing all the dozen flies that fly into your living room when you leave the patio door open, imagine trying to kill your quota of 10 to the 21st viruses. It is foolish to think that we can kill all viruses. There are only two winning strategies: 1. quarantine humans from the natural world (e.g. confining cities inside artificial domes), 2. engineer such a strong immune system that the human body will resist any virus attack of any kind.

Ironically, human society has been moving in the opposite direction. On one hand humans travel a lot more than ever, therefore getting in touch with many more viruses than ever. On the other hand, by keeping alive millions of children who would have died of all sorts of diseases and by “protecting” people with all sorts of vaccinations, we are creating a immune system that is now vulnerable to anything, from the dirt in your backyard to the water of mountain creeks.

In other words, we have both of the worst worlds: the human body is getting weaker, and it is getting easier to spread diseases.

Bacteria are far less dangerous than viruses. In fact, most bacteria are useful to us (the “commensal bacteria”). Our body contains many more bacteria cells than human cells, and we need them: they carry out vital functions for us helping us digest and even… fight viruses. Unfortunately, we tend to kill them by the millions when we use (and abuse of) antibiotics.

{ IEET | Continue reading }

The risk of waking from a general anaesthetic while under the surgeon’s knife is extremely small - about one in 15,000 - research reveals.

Out of nearly 3 million operations in 2011 there were 153 reported cases. […] A third - 46 in total - were conscious throughout the operation.

{ BBC | Continue reading }

The incidence of accidental awareness during general anaesthesia (AAGA) is reported by several studies to be surprisingly high, in the range of 1–2 per 1000 general anaesthetics administered. These studies employ a direct patient questionnaire (usually repeated three times over a period of up to 30 days postoperatively) known as the ‘Brice protocol.’ It is also reported that a high proportion of patients experiencing AAGA suffer psychological problems including posttraumatic stress disorder. There are in fact very few studies reporting an incidence of AAGA much lower than this, an exception being that of Pollard et al., who found an incidence of 1:14 500. However, their methods might be criticised as they administered the questionnaire only twice over a 48-h period, which might only detect two thirds of cases . Anecdotally, anaesthetists do not perceive the incidence of AAGA to be so high. A small Japanese study found that only 21 of 172 practitioners had known of an incident of AAGA under their care, with an overall incidence of just 1:3500. In a larger UK survey of over 2000 consultants, Lau et al. reported that anaesthetists estimated the incidence to be approximately 1:5000, similar to the estimated incidence reported previously by 220 Australian anaesthetists of between 1:5000 and 1:10 000.

{ Anaesthesia/Wiley | Continue reading }

Baerg was challenged by a Cornell colleague to investigate whether black widows were harmless or poisonous. […] He made extensive observations of black widow behavior and its venom’s effects on rats. Baerg used himself as an experimental subject to test the effects of the venom on humans. He induced a black widow to bite the third finger of his left hand, but the bite was apparently superficial, and he suffered no symptoms besides a “slight, sharp pain.” Baerg repeated the test the following day, this time allowing the spider’s fangs to remain inserted for five seconds. During the next three days, Baerg recorded his symptoms and reactions, creating the first account of the effects of the black widow spider bite on humans; it was published in the March 1923 edition of The Journal of Parasitology (vol. 9, no. 3). Baerg observed the swelling and pain that followed the spider’s bite, noting that, as the symptoms spread to his shoulder, chest, and hips, he had problems with breathing and speech. He also noted that the “doctor advises that I go to bed.” He recalled the experience later, saying that the pain was severe and different from anything he had ever experienced. Baerg induced numbers of arachnids to bite or sting him over the successive years and recorded the resulting effects.

{ Encyclopedia of Arkansas | Continue reading }

art { Joan Miró, Painting (Head and Spider), 1925 }

Fall asleep in the wrong position, and acid slips into the esophagus, a recipe for agita and insomnia.

Doctors recommend sleeping on an incline, which allows gravity to keep the stomach’s contents where they belong. But sleeping on your side can also make a difference — so long as you choose the correct side. Several studies have found that sleeping on the right side aggravates heartburn; sleeping on the left tends to calm it.

{ NY Times | Continue reading }

related { Those who have a tendency to migrate to the left of a double bed are apparently happier than their ‘right’ counterparts }

photos { Wally McNamee | Mitch Epstein }

Prevailing wisdom suggests that our genes remain largely fixed over time. But, an emerging field of research is beginning to prove this intuition wrong. Scientists are uncovering increasing evidence that changes in the expression of hundreds of genes can occur as a result of the social environments we inhabit. As a result of these dynamics, experiences we have today can affect our health for days and even months into the future. […]

People who experience chronic social isolation show reduced antiviral immune response gene activity, which leaves them vulnerable to viral infections like the common cold. […] Other social conditions that have been found to influence human gene expression include being socially evaluated or rejected, which can have different consequences for different people depending on their sensitivity to social threat.

{ APS | Continue reading }

photo { Jonathan Waiter }

The average bicycle police officer spends 24 hours a week on his bicycle and previous studies have shown riding a bicycle with a traditional (nosed) saddle has been associated with urogenital paresthesia and sexual dysfunction. […]

The objective of this study was to assess the effectiveness of the no-nose bicycle saddle as an ergonomic intervention and their acceptance among male bicycle police officers. Bicycle police officers from five U.S. metropolitan areas were recruited for this study. […]

After 6 months, 90 men were reassessed. Only three men had returned to a traditional saddle.

{ International Society for Sexual Medicine | PDF | via Improbable }

images { 1. Charles Ray | 2. Dietmar Busse }

Objective: To describe the epidemiology of genital injuries caused by trouser zips and to educate both consumers and the caregivers of patients who sustain such injuries.

[…]

Conclusion: Zip-related genital injuries affect both paediatric and adult cohorts. Practitioners should be familiar with various zip-detachment strategies for these populations.

{ PubMed | Continue reading }

Roofies — a street name for the drug flunitrazepam, sold under the brand name Rohypnol — have never been approved for sale in the U.S. A quick glance through some of the other popular street names will give a clue as to why: roaches, mind erasers, ropies, wolfies, forget pills, and the date-rape drug are among the most menacing endearments for the stuff.

The drug was developed in the 1970s by Hoffman LaRoche and began appearing stateside in the 1980s, but the FDA never approved it, not even as a sleep aid, the intention for which it was originally developed. Elsewhere, it’s sold as that or as a hypnotic, which — I don’t even know what to say about living in a country like Sweden, where you could be prescribed a hypnotic. It’s also used to treat hospital patients in preparation for surgery. Here in the U.S., the Safe Streets and Communities Act of 2012 reclassified it a Schedule I drug — one with no medical value whatsoever, like cocaine and heroin.

The side effects of flunitrazepam are what make it such a troubling concoction. In addition to slowing psychomotor performance (e.g., the ability to run away if threatened) and causing whatever combination of relaxation, sedation, and suggestibility, which brings about the designation hypnotic in Europe, the drug also causes memory loss. A standard dosage — one or two milligrams — can last for eight to 12 hours, with hangover effects extending from several days to over a week. It’s also highly addictive. And it can kill you. Although some merely vomit.

Users self-administer roofies as a sleep aid, to enhance the effects of alcohol, or to mitigate depression caused by withdrawal from other drugs. (I’m told it’s a great rush.) Yet flunitrazepam isn’t always self-administered, which is where the mythology that surrounds the stuff is born. It’s been known to have been given to people, unwittingly if not against their will. This is because most who have ingested a standard dosage will exhibit within fifteen minutes a troubling combination of physical docility and compliant suggestibility.

{ Anne Elizabeth Moore/TNI | Continue reading }

The defendant in the deadly Colorado theater shooting could be given “truth serum” under a court order issued Monday to help determine whether he is insane if he pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. […]

A narcoanalylitic interview is a decades-old process in which patients are given drugs to lower their inhibition. Academic studies have shown that the technique has involved the use of sodium amytal and pentothal, sometimes called truth serum.

{ AP/Mercury News | Continue reading }

Nanoparticles carrying a toxin found in bee venom can destroy human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) while leaving surrounding cells unharmed.

The finding is an important step toward developing a vaginal gel that may prevent the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

{ Washington University in St. Louis | Continue reading }

photo { Dan Winters, Dead Bees, Oakdale, California, March 11-15, 2006 }

China’s demand for foreign milk powder surged after a 2008 milk powder scandal, in which at least six children died and more than 300,000 got sick from milk laced with melamine. Hong Kong’s wide range of foreign milk powder brands is considered more trustworthy than even the foreign imports available in Chinese supermarkets. […]

Middle-class parents choosing to feed their child foreign milk powder might spend anywhere from 25-40% of their monthly salary. […]

Comprehensive statistics are impossible to gauge, but it is very common to encounter Chinese people overseas who have been asked to send back milk powder to a friend or relative, or who know others that engage in this activity to make money. 

{ Tea Leaf Nation | Continue reading }

We all know that smoking is bad for our health and that eating vegetables is good for it. Yet how bad and how good are they? […]

To answer his own question, Spiegelhalter converted reams of statistical risk tables into a simple metric: a microlife—30 minutes. If you smoke two cigarettes, you lose 30 minutes of your life. Exercise for 20 minutes, and you gain two units of microlife.

{ Scientific American | Continue reading }

3D printing technology has helped replace 75 percent of a patient’s skull with the approval of U.S. regulators. […]

3D printing’s advantage comes from taking the digitally scanned model of a patient’s skull and “printing” out a matching 3D object layer by layer. The precise manufacturing technique can even make tiny surface or edge details on the replacement part that encourage the growth of cells and allow bone to attach more easily.

{ TechNewsDaily | Continue reading }

Most living things have an innate immune system: a set of mechanisms that fight off potential infections. Humans, for instance, have cells called phagocytes that eat invading bacteria, and bacteria have special enzymes that latch onto viral DNA and cut it to pieces.

But some organisms also have an adaptive immune system, which “remembers” diseases it has been exposed to, so the next time it meets them it can handle them better. This is the basis for vaccination, which uses weakened versions of a disease to prime us for the real thing. Until 2007, it was thought that only vertebrates had an adaptive immune system.

In fact, many single-celled organisms have one. Bacteria often carry repetitive genetic sequences called CRISPRs, which protect them against viruses.

When a bacterium is attacked by a virus, it copies a small piece of the virus’s DNA and stores it among the CRISPRs. The bacterium will then be better at fighting off the virus: the bacterium can acquire resistance, just like a human acquiring resistance to a disease.

The CRISPRs are a library of diseases, storing samples of past infections. If the same kind of virus attacks again, the bacterium is ready. Any viral genes that enter the cell are quickly marked for destruction. […]

But the war isn’t over. Viruses are notoriously adaptable. According to Andrew Camilli of Tufts University in Boston and colleagues, ICP1 has managed to turn the CRISPR system to its own advantage. […] At some point, the virus must have stolen part of the bacterium’s arsenal and re-programmed it to target what was left.

{ NewScientist | Continue reading }

art { Jean-Michel Basquiat, Untitled (Two Heads on Gold), 1982 (detail) }

All kinds of things go into a woman’s vagina. Some are friendly (like sperm and vaginal microbes), and some are very bad (STDs). The immune system in the vagina has to be able to tell the difference and react appropriately. As you can imagine, the system isn’t perfect and sometimes things go terribly wrong.

An article published earlier this month in the journal Frontiers in Immunology reviewed the current state of knowledge of the vaginal immune system. […]

if a woman should become pregnant, her immune system has to know that it can’t attack the growing fetus, even though it’s technically a foreign object. […] When sperm enter the vagina, it sets off a rapid response in the cervix called the leukocyte reaction. A whole slew of immune cells rushes to attack and kill the invading cells, also known to the future baby as ‘dad’. This might be partly why millions of sperm are needed in order for just one to fertilize an egg.

{ nitty gritty science | Continue reading }

Worldwide, over US$100 billion is invested every year in supporting biomedical research, which results in an estimated 1 million research publications per year. […]

An efficient system of research should address health problems of importance to populations and the interventions and outcomes considered important by patients and clinicians. However, public funding of research is correlated only modestly with disease burden, if at all. Within specific health problems there is little research on the extent to which questions addressed by researchers match questions of relevance to patients and clinicians. […]

Although some waste in the production and reporting of research evidence is inevitable and bearable, we were surprised by the levels of waste suggested in the evidence we have pieced together. Since research must pass through all four stages shown in the figure, the waste is cumulative. If the losses estimated in the figure apply more generally, then the roughly 50% loss at stages 2, 3, and 4 would lead to a greater than 85% loss, which implies that the dividends from tens of billions of dollars of investment in research are lost every year because of correctable problems.

{ Iain Chalmers, Paul Glasziou | PDF | via OvercomingBias }

One big problem with “go pills”? After taking them, soldiers need a way to come down, and fast. Which explains why military doctors dole out “no-go pills,” like Ambien. The Pentagon doesn’t have specific figures, but in 2007 Time magazine estimated 10,000 soldiers overseas were authorized to take sleeping pills.

{ The New Republic | Continue reading }

Is there a link between coffee drinking and mortality?

A large study of nearly half a million older adults followed for about 12 years revealed a clear trend: as coffee drinking increased, the risk of death decreased.

{ Liebert | Continue reading }

It’s obvious that anti-anxiety medicines and other types of mood-modifying drugs alter the behavior of humans—it’s what they’re designed to do. But their effects, it turns out, aren’t limited to our species.

Over the past decade, researchers have repeatedly discovered high levels of many drug molecules in lakes and streams near wastewater treatment plants, and found evidence that rainbow trout and other fish subjected to these levels could absorb dangerous amounts of the medications over time. Now, a study published today in Science finds a link between behavior-modifying drugs and the actual behavior of fish for the first time. A group of researchers from Umeå University in Sweden found that levels of the anti-anxiety drug oxazepam commonly found in Swedish streams cause wild perch to act differently, becoming more anti-social, eating faster and showing less fear of unknown parts of their environment.

{ Smithsonian | Continue reading }