Aimee Cunningham More than 2 million U.S. middle and high school students — or nearly 1 in 11 — have vaped marijuana, a new study suggests. Based on reports of teens’ e-cigarette use in 2016, researchers estimate that nearly 1 in 3 high school students, or roughly 1.7 million, have used pot in the devices. Nearly 1 in 4 middle school students, or 425,000, have done the same, the team reports online September 17 in JAMA Pediatrics. The numbers are the first nationwide estimates of teens’ and preteens’ use of marijuana in e-cigs, based on data from 20,675 sixth- to 12th-graders who participated in the 2016 National Youth Tobacco Survey. The most widely used tobacco products among U.S. youth, e-cigarettes are battery-powered devices that heat and vaporize liquids that usually contain nicotine (SN: 5/28/16, p. 4). But the devices can also vaporize dried marijuana leaves or buds as well as oils or waxes made from the plant’s primary active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. The number of youth using marijuana in e-cigarettes isn’t surprising, says Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a developmental psychologist at Stanford University School of Medicine who was not involved in the study. “It’s easy; it’s accessible; they can be stealthy in using it.” Vaping marijuana can be done more discretely than smoking a joint because there isn’t as much of the telltale odor, if any. And legalization of marijuana in some states has led to increased access to the drug, she says, and a change in social norms regarding the drug’s use. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018.

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25463 - Posted: 09.18.2018

Luke Watkin was in year eight at school and alone in a corridor when he first heard a strange noise. "I heard what sounded like a train brake, followed by a metal on metal noise. "It was just something completely out of the ordinary. It was a bit of a shock to the system, something I just couldn't understand or really process. "My experience at the time was quite terrifying." It was his first experience of the mental health condition, psychosis. Luke was 12 years old. He said it went on from noises to hearing words, hearing his name, to eventually hearing whole sentences "of it almost trying to talk to me". The main symptoms of psychosis are hallucinations and delusions and it can be caused by a specific mental health condition, such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression. It can also be triggered by traumatic experiences, stress, drugs, alcohol, as a side-effect of prescribed mediation or a physical condition such as a brain tumour. While it is not as common as depression - affecting fewer than one in every hundred - experts say it is important to recognise symptoms of psychosis early because early treatment can be more effective. People with psychosis have a higher than average risk of self-harm and suicide. The charity Rethink Mental Illness has surveyed 4,000 people and found more than half believe they wouldn't be able to identify the early symptoms. They are concerned that a general lack of awareness leads to young people not getting help early on - especially as the first episode of psychosis is most likely to happen between the ages of 18 and 24. More subtle early warning signs include withdrawing from friends, expressing strange beliefs, sudden changes in mood and confused thoughts. © 2018 BBC

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 25462 - Posted: 09.18.2018

By Alan Jasanoff Disorders of the mind have meant different things to different people at different times. In Plato’s “Phaedrus,” Socrates extols divinely inspired madness in mystics, lovers, poets and prophets; he describes these disturbances as gifts of the gods, rather than maladies. Premodern Europeans more commonly despised the insane, but barely distinguished them from others their society rejected; madmen were imprisoned alongside beggars, blasphemers and prostitutes. Some modern cultures have notions of mental disorder that seem almost as strange to us; syndromes with names like latah, amok and zar defy traditional classifications of Western psychiatry and often call for spiritual rather than medical responses. Our own culture’s conception of the varieties of mental illness took shape first from a deck of cards curated by the pioneering German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin over a century ago. Each of the cards contained an abstract of a patient’s medical history, and by grouping them according to similarities he observed among the cases, Kraepelin delineated for the first time some of the major categories physicians now use to diagnose psychiatric diseases. Since the 1980s, Kraepelin’s characterizations of psychosis, mania and depression have been virtually codified in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the clinician’s bible for evaluating patients. Kraepelin was a staunch critic of psychoanalysis and passionate advocate for understanding mental phenomena in strictly biological terms — attitudes now also ascendant in psychiatric biomedicine. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Schizophrenia
Link ID: 25461 - Posted: 09.18.2018

By Meredith Wadman During decades of lab experiments and dozens of clinical trials, scientists have searched in vain for drugs to defeat obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), the risky and increasingly prevalent condition in which a person’s upper airway repeatedly collapses during sleep, causing them to briefly stop breathing, dozens or hundreds of times each night. Now a new drug combination has reawakened hopes. A team led by researchers in Boston has identified a pair of medications--approved for other uses and with solid safety records--that appear to work in concert during sleep to activate the muscles that dilate the upper airway. In a study of 20 patients, the scientists found that a combination of atomoxetine and oxybutynin, taken as two pills at bedtime, reduced patients’ frequency of airway obstruction – called the apnea-hypopnea index, or AHI -- from a median of 28.5 hourly obstructions on placebo to 7.5 on the pills. In the 15 patients with the highest AHI’s, the median reduction was 74% -- and every patient experienced at least a 50% reduction, Andrew Wellman and Luigi Taranto-Montemurro at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts, reported this week today at the International Congress of the European Respiratory Society in Paris, France. Patients’ blood oxygenation also improved strikingly, the group found. “We’ve never had a drug combination, or any sort of a drug, that consistently improved everybody’s AHI. That’s actually unbelievably exciting,” says Sigrid Veasey of the University of Pennsylvania, a physician-researcher who studies sleep. It’s “a great first step,” adds Martina Mason, a sleep physician at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, United Kingdom, who coauthored a 2013 review of 30 previous, underwhelming drug trials. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 25460 - Posted: 09.17.2018

By Perri Klass, M.D. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a major new guideline on diagnosing and managing head injuries in children on Sept. 4, the product of years of work and extensive evidence review by a large working group of specialists in fields ranging from emergency medicine and epidemiology to sports injuries to neurology and neurosurgery. The guideline, which is the first from the C.D.C. that is specific to mild brain injury in children, advises against the long recovery period, isolated in a dark, quiet room, that has sometimes been used in treatment. “The brain is a somewhat gelatinous, even trembling organ which houses our consciousness,” said Dr. Angela Lumba-Brown, a pediatric emergency medicine specialist who is the co-director of the Stanford Concussion and Brain Performance Center, and the first author of the guideline. “It does have resilience, but there are periods in life when it is particularly vulnerable.” Having a truly evidence-based guideline should help clinicians personalize the care that children receive and the ways they gradually reintegrate into activities and sports, she said, rather than applying rigid rules — and should generally encourage an earlier return to non-risky activity. The guideline focuses specifically on what is called mTBI, for “mild traumatic brain injury,” which might otherwise be called concussion. There are studies which show that the way that people think about these head injuries — the kids, the parents, the coaches, the doctors — can actually be affected by which term is used, so that what is called a concussion may not be taken as seriously as what is called a mild traumatic brain injury. Some of these injuries are related to sports, but many involve falls from playground equipment, or in the home, as young children explore their developing physical abilities. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Brain Injury/Concussion; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 25459 - Posted: 09.17.2018

Stephanie O'Neill Shirley Avedon, 90,­­ had never been a cannabis user. But carpal tunnel syndrome that sends shooting pains into both of her hands and an aversion to conventional steroid and surgical treatments is prompting her to consider some new options. "It's very painful, sometimes I can't even open my hand," Avedon says. So for the second time in two months, she's climbed on board a bus that provides seniors at the Laguna Woods Village retirement community in Orange County, Calif., with a free shuttle to a nearby marijuana dispensary. The retired manager of an oncology office says she's seeking the same relief she saw cancer patients get from smoking marijuana 25 years ago. "At that time (marijuana) wasn't legal, so they used to get it off their children," she says with a laugh. "It was fantastic what it did for them." Avedon, who doesn't want to get high from anything she uses, picked up a topical cream on her first trip that was sold as a pain reliever. It contained cannabidiol or CBD, but was formulated without THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, marijuana's psychoactive ingredient. "It helped a little," she says. "Now I'm going back for the second time hoping they have something better." As more states legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use — 30 states plus the District of Columbia to date — the cannabis industry is booming. Among the fastest growing group of users: people over 50, with especially steep increases among those 65 and older. And some dispensaries are tailoring their pitches to seniors like Avedon who are seeking alternatives treatments for their aches, pains and other medical conditions. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25458 - Posted: 09.17.2018

By John Horgan It is the central mystery of existence, the one toward which all other mysteries converge. Schopenhauer called it the world knot (hence the image above). Descartes often gets credit for posing it first, but Socrates pondered it millennia earlier, as did Buddha and other Eastern sages. I’m talking about the mind-body problem, which encompasses the riddles of consciousness, the self, free will, morality, the meaning of life. Modern scientists and philosophers often make the mind-body problem seem hopelessly esoteric, a topic only for experts. Hard-core materialists insist it is a pseudo-problem, which vanishes once you jettison archaic concepts like “the self” and “free will.” Actually, the mind-body problem is quite real, simple and urgent. You face it whenever you wonder who you really are. Long before I heard of it, I was obsessed with the mind-body problem. I touch on it, directly or indirectly, in my previous four books, even The End of War, the epilogue of which is called “In Defense of Free Will.” Writing hasn’t been cathartic. The more I write about the mind-body problem, the more it grips me. In 2015, after attending a workshop on a weird new theory of consciousness, I started looking at the mind-problem in a new way. Our responses to the mind-body problem will always be emotional as well as rational, a matter of taste as much as truth. We can’t escape our subjectivity when we try to solve the riddle of ourselves. So I conjectured. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 25457 - Posted: 09.17.2018

Lauren Gravitz When Kate Sieloff's husband, Karl, began acting strange, she didn't know where to turn. Her hard-working, affectionate spouse was suddenly having fits of anger and aggression. He stopped paying the bills. Karl, 56 at the time, was an engineer at General Motors, where he'd worked for more than 40 years. But some days he didn't even show up for work, finding it too hard to get out of bed. Because the problems were sporadic, most people in her life couldn't see what was going on. They told Kate, of Romeo, Mich., that she was imagining things. Doctors suggested that Karl was depressed and tried him on a variety of medications. When he began depleting their savings on impulsive purchases, and grew even more aggressive and violent, her son—a neurologist at the University of Michigan's medical center in Ann Arbor—insisted she bring Karl to his hospital for evaluation. Doctors there quickly diagnosed him with frontotemporal dementia. For Kate, the diagnosis was a relief, but she still felt overwhelmed and needed help coping with her husband's illness. Getting his diabetes medications under control, and starting him on a mood stabilizer and a new antidepressant helped control his mood swings while restoring some of his loving personality. © 2018 npr

Keyword: Alzheimers
Link ID: 25456 - Posted: 09.17.2018

By Erin Blakemore Janet Jay is a cyborg. No, she’s not RoboCop or Darth Vader. But she shares a similarity with those characters: Her all-too-human body has been upgraded with a machine. A next-generation implant deep in Jay’s back stimulates her spinal cord, overriding her body’s pain signals to give her some relief from the back pain that has plagued her for years. In an article on Popular Science’s website, Jay writes about her experience with pain and the next-generation way she’s finding relief. She is hardly alone in her suffering. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, an estimated 25.3 million Americans, or 11.2 percent of U.S. adults, experience chronic pain. It can interfere with work and home life and leave patients debilitated, disabled and depressed. So it makes sense that Jay jumped at the chance to experience long-term pain relief with the help of a spinal-cord stimulator. Jay lays out the hows and whys of spinal stimulation, and she paints a vivid picture of a life in agony, a journey that has included skeptical doctors, plenty of painkillers and unanswered questions about the future. She also describes her path to spinal stimulation, how the device works with the body to short-circuit pain, and the many roadblocks to relief that patients face. “Even for me, the battle is not over,” Jay writes. “Since this surgery I’ve actually had another disc herniate, complicating everything. My spine isn’t cured, and I still hurt all the time. But the pain is far more controlled, and I can function much better at my current level of discomfort.” © 1996-2018 The Washington Post

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25455 - Posted: 09.17.2018

By Ingrid Wickelgren It’s 7 p.m. on a Friday and Rebecca "Becky" Audette is already in bed, tucked under a polka-dotted lavender comforter. Dark purple velour curtains with butterfly ties hang over the lavender walls of her bedroom. Purple has been Becky’s favorite color since she was a toddler, before she was diagnosed with autism at age 7. Now, the young woman functions at about the level of a 4-year-old. “Am I going to bed? I want to go to bed,” she insists. Becky lives with her mother, Pamela Peirce; brother, Jason Audette; and Jason’s wife in a gray-and-white colonial-style house that was Peirce’s childhood home in Rehoboth, Massachusetts. When Peirce was a child, her extended family owned five houses along this quarter-mile stretch of road, dirt back then. Peirce and her grown children are the last of the clan to occupy the street. It’s paved now, but the house still sports features of an earlier time: two-pronged electrical outlets, a VCR, inherited furniture. It also offers a hopeful vision of the future. Becky bears the markings of an invasive, high-tech treatment under her purple plaid pajamas: two linear scars, each about 3 inches long, over her clavicle, and two circular bulges protruding ever so slightly from her chest. Beneath these marks lies the power source for an implant that stimulates key parts of her brain. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 25454 - Posted: 09.15.2018

Hannah Devlin Science correspondent Hundreds of thousands of girls and women with autism are going undiagnosed due to it being viewed as a “male condition”, according to one of the UK’s leading neuroscientists. Prof Francesca Happé, director of the Social, Genetic & Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London, warned that the failure to recognise autism in girls and women was taking a stark toll on their mental health. “We’ve overlooked autism in women and girls and I think there’s a real gender equality issue here,” she said. “I think we are missing large numbers and misdiagnosing them too.” Until recently, autism without intellectual impairments, sometimes called Asperger syndrome, was thought to predominantly affect boys and men, at a ratio of 10 to every one woman. However, there is growing evidence that the number of girls and women with the condition may have been vastly underestimated. Recent research, based on active screening rather than clinical or school records, found a ratio of 3:1. Happé and others believe this could fall further – potentially to as low as 2:1 – as diagnostic processes become better tailored to identifying autism in girls and women. Due to early assumptions about autism mostly affecting men, studies have often recruited male-only cohorts. Male participants in brain imaging studies on autism outnumber females by eight to one, and in earlier research the bias was even more pronounced. © 2018 Guardian News and Media Limited

Keyword: Autism; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 25453 - Posted: 09.15.2018

Aimee Cunningham Certain brain and personality characteristics may help predict whether a sugar pill can provide relief to someone suffering from chronic pain. In a small study, patients with persistent back pain who responded to a placebo treatment benefitted from up to a 33 percent reduction in their pain intensity. These people had distinctive features in their brains and certain personality traits, researchers report online September 12 in Nature Communications. About 20 percent of U.S. adults, or about 50 million people, had chronic pain in 2016, according to new data released September 13 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Chronic pain was defined as feeling pain on most days, if not every day, over the previous six months. Being able to identify people who respond to a placebo might mean doctors could give these individuals the option of a pain reliever that’s cheap, free of side effects and — unlike opioids, which are often prescribed to treat persistent pain — not addictive. “We need to seriously think about placebo as a treatment option, especially in chronic pain patients,” says neuroscientist and study coauthor A. Vania Apkarian of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. |© Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2018

Keyword: Pain & Touch
Link ID: 25452 - Posted: 09.15.2018

Hannah Thomasy Transferring memories from one mind to another seems like something out of science fiction. But biologists from UCLA have recently found that memory transfer is in fact possible—at least in sea slugs. In the study, researchers in Professor David Glanzman’s lab examined memory in sea slugs using something called the siphon withdrawal reflex. The siphon is a sort of fleshy tube that sea slugs and other mollusks use to propel water in and out of their bodies. When the siphon is touched, the sea slug ordinarily withdraws it into its body as a protective reflex. The scientists “trained” the sea slugs, giving them a series of light shocks which caused them to become more sensitive to future stimuli. Then the researchers tested the slugs’ siphon withdrawal reflex 48 hours later. Sea slugs that had been shocked kept their siphons withdrawn for a significantly longer period of time than untrained sea slugs. This suggests that the conditioned sea slugs had formed a memory of their shocks. So far, nothing unusual. But then researchers removed RNA from the neurons of these trained sea slugs, and injected it into a new group—into sea slugs that hadn’t ever been shocked. Weirdly, even these otherwise naive sea slugs withdrew their siphons for much longer than normal when they were poked. In other words, they acted like they remembered being shocked, even though the shocks didn’t actually happen to them. These findings have been extremely controversial in the neuroscience community because they challenge the way that most researchers understand memory. For decades, scientists have believed that memories are stored in the brain’s synaptic connections. In other words, changing the connections between neurons (or groups of neurons) is what allows us to form and store memories. © 2017 Massive Science Inc.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 25451 - Posted: 09.15.2018

By JoAnna Klein Plants have no eyes, no ears, no mouth and no hands. They do not have a brain or a nervous system. Muscles? Forget them. They’re stuck where they started, soaking up the sun and sucking up nutrients from the soil. And yet, when something comes around to eat them, they sense it. And they fight back. How is this possible? “You’ve got to think like a vegetable now,” says Simon Gilroy, a botanist who studies how plants sense and respond to their environments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Plants are not green animals,” Dr. Gilroy says. “Plants are different, but sometimes they’re remarkably similar to how animals operate.” To reveal the secret workings of a plant’s threat communication system for a study published Thursday in Science, Masatsugu Toyota (now a professor at Saitama University in Japan) and other researchers in Dr. Gilroy’s lab sent in munching caterpillars like in the video above. They also slashed leaves with scissors. They applied glutamate, an important neurotransmitter that helps neurons communicate in animals. In these and about a dozen other videos, they used a glowing, green protein to trace calcium and accompanying chemical and electrical messages in the plant. And they watched beneath a microscope as warnings transited through the leafy green appendages, revealing that plants aren’t as passive as they seem. The messages start at the point of attack, where glutamate initiates a wave of calcium that propagates through the plant’s veins, or plumbing system. The deluge turns on stress hormones and genetic switches that open plant arsenals and prepare the plant to ward off attackers — with no thought or movement. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 25450 - Posted: 09.14.2018

By Emily Underwood On a moonless night, the light that reaches Earth is a trillion–fold less than on a sunny day. Yet most mammals still see well enough to get around just fine—even without the special light-boosting membranes in the eyes of cats and other nocturnal animals. A new study in mice hints at how this natural night vision works: Motion-sensing nerve cells in the retina temporarily change how they wire to each other in dark conditions. The findings might one day help visually impaired humans, researchers say. Scientists already knew a bit about how night vision works in rabbits, mice, humans, and other mammals. Mammalian retinas can respond to “ridiculously small” numbers of photons, says Joshua Singer, a neuroscientist at the University of Maryland in College Park who was not involved in the new study. A single photon can activate a light-sensitive cell known as a rod cell in the retina, which sends a minute electrical signal to the brain through a ganglion cell. One kind of ganglion cell specializes in motion detection—a vital function if you’re a mouse being hunted by an owl, or a person darting to avoid oncoming traffic. Some of these direction-selective ganglion cells (DSGCs) get excited only when an object is moving upward. Others fire only when objects are moving down, or to the left or right. Together, the cells decide where an object is headed and relay that information to the brain, which decides how to act. © 2018 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Vision; Evolution
Link ID: 25449 - Posted: 09.14.2018

By Knvul Sheikh Humans and other mammals react to stressful situations through a series of well-orchestrated evolutionary adaptations. When faced with a predator looking for its next meal, or with worry of losing a job, our bodies release a cascade of stress hormones. Our heart rate spikes, breath quickens, muscles tense up and beads of sweat appear. This so-called “fight-or-flight” response served our ancestors well, but its continual activation in our modern-day lives comes with a cost. Scientists are starting to realize stress often exacerbates several diseases, including depression, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, HIV/AIDS and asthma. One theory is hoping to explain the link between stress and such widespread havoc by laying the blame on an unexpected source—the microscopic powerhouses inside each cell. Each of our cells contains hundreds of small bean-shaped mitochondria — subcellular structures, or organelles, that provide the energy needed for normal functioning. Mitochondria have their own circular genome with 37 genes. We inherit this mitochondrial DNA only from our mothers, so the makeup of the DNA’s code stays relatively consistent from one generation to the next. But our fight-or-flight response places extreme demands on the mitochondria. All of a sudden, they need to produce much more energy to fuel a faster heartbeat, expanding lungs and tensing muscles, which leaves them vulnerable to damage. Unlike DNA in the cell’s nucleus, though, mitochondria have limited repair mechanisms. And recent animal studies have shown chronic stress not only leads to mitochondrial damage in brain regions such as the hippocampus, hypothalamus and cortex, it also results in mitochondria releasing their DNA into the cell cytoplasm, and eventually into the blood. © 2018 Scientific American,

Keyword: Depression; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25448 - Posted: 09.14.2018

By Abraham Loeb Scientific discoveries substantiate our awe when faced with the richness and universality of the laws of nature. But science falls short of explaining this natural order and why it exists in the first place. This is where philosophy comes to the rescue. Science seeks to understand how the universe works, just as we might try to figure out the mechanics of a sophisticated engine. Philosophy, by contrast, addresses questions that transcend the functionality of nature, as we might pursue the complementary task of figuring out why the engine is constructed in a particular way. As a scientist, I am surprised at the degree of organization the universe exhibits; the same laws that govern its earliest moments—something we know from observations of the most distant galaxies and most ancient radiation—also preside over what we find today in laboratories on Earth. This should not be taken for granted. We could have witnessed a fragmented reality, one in which different regions of spacetime obey different sets of laws or even behave chaotically with no rational explanation. By studying the physical constituents of an engine, one acquires a better understanding of how it works but not necessarily the purpose for its existence. Metaphysical thinking can supplement science in territories not accessible to empirical inquiry. Within these domains, philosophy can build on scientific knowledge rather than yield to it. © 2018 Scientific American

Keyword: Consciousness
Link ID: 25447 - Posted: 09.13.2018

By Sheila Kaplan and Jan Hoffman WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday declared that teenage use of electronic cigarettes has reached “an epidemic proportion,” and it put makers of the most popular devices on notice that they have just 60 days to prove they can keep their devices away from minors. The order was part of a sweeping government action that targeted both makers and sellers of e-cigarettes. If Juul Labs and four other major manufacturers fail to halt sales to minors, the agency said, it could remove their flavored products from the market. It also raised the possibility of civil or criminal charges if companies are allowing bulk sales through their websites. The agency said it was sending warning letters to 1,100 retailers — including 7-Eleven stores, Walgreens, Circle K convenience shops and Shell gas stations — and issued another 131 fines, ranging from $279 to $11,182, for selling e-cigarettes to minors. Federal law prohibits selling e-cigarettes to anyone under 18. In a briefing with reporters, the F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, said that more than two million middle and high school students were regular users of e-cigarettes last year. The government’s tactics underscore a dilemma in the public health community: In addressing one public health problem — cigarette smoking, which kills 480,000 people in the United States each year — e-cigarettes are creating another — hooking teenagers who have never smoked on nicotine. © 2018 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 25446 - Posted: 09.13.2018

By: Albert La Spada, M.D., Ph.D. Altering the DNA sequence of a single gene can be enough to cause a fatal illness, and a medical specialty is devoted to the diagnosis and care of patients who have what doctors have labeled “genetic diseases.” While most of these conditions are very rare (except in certain small human populations that exist in reproductive isolation1), there are thousands of genetic diseases, and at least half of pediatric patients admitted to major children’s medical centers at any given time are afflicted with one of them.2 Single gene mutations can also cause breast, ovarian, and colon cancer in adult patients. Over the last century, our understanding of genetic disease has greatly advanced through the tireless work of clinicians and researchers, as the concept of one gene giving rise to one particular disorder evolved, and the modes of inheritance for different genetic diseases were defined. In the course of this work, certain such diseases (e.g. sickle cell anemia, cystic fibrosis, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, neurofibromatosis) became well known, almost always because they were the most common and the most tragic. Included in this group is a disorder that has been the focus of intense research efforts to define its cause and now to develop an effective treatment: Huntington’s disease (HD). In this primarily neuropsychiatric disorder, most affected individuals first suffer from an inability to control their movements, and develop signs of disease in their 30s or 40s. Because these uncontrolled movements can appear rhythmic, the disease was also named Huntington’s chorea, from the Greek word for dance. The initial phase typically advances for a number of years before HD patients develop cognitive decline, which progresses until they can no longer perform the activities of daily living. At this point, patients are typically admitted to a skilled nursing facility, where they linger in decline for more years before passing away. © 2018 The Dana Foundation

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 25445 - Posted: 09.13.2018

By Michael Schulson Last spring, Paul Strode gave an unusual survey to his advanced biology students at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colorado. The first five questions were: 1. Define as best you can: What is a racial group? 2. Define as best you can: What is an ethnic group? 3. Define as best you can: What is meant by the term genetic ancestry? 4. True or False: There is too much overlap between racial groups to use a single biological trait (like skin color) to distinguish one racial group from another. 5. True or False: When several traits are combined they can be used to distinguish one racial group from another. “In terms of wading into the idea of gender identification, differences between racial groups and so forth, we regard those as potential firestorms, if we were to go there.” The next day, Strode showed his students — all seniors — their aggregated results. On some questions, the students were mostly in agreement. More than 80 percent of them, for example, correctly marked Question 4 as “True.” But other topics were muddier, and on several questions — including #5 — the students split nearly 50-50. “They’re guessing,” Strode says. (For the record, the answer he says he was looking for on #5 was “False.”) Strode’s exercise is an anomaly. Most American biology textbooks and curricula don’t discuss race at all — nor do they grapple with the biology of sexual orientation or gender, for that matter. To some, these omissions seem appropriate. Early 20th-century biology textbooks, after all, were replete with ignorant racial and gender stereotyping and classifications purporting to be scientific — and some even extolled the virtues of racial purity. It would be hard to find such discussions in today’s biology classrooms and supporting materials. Copyright 2018 Undark

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 25444 - Posted: 09.13.2018