Article is from Ideas.Ted.com

Half of the American preschoolers diagnosed with ADHD are given drugs to treat the symptoms. Is that necessary? Is there another way?

Neurobiologist David Anderson is alarmed by the idea of drugging children to treat the symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Especially during adolescence, when changing levels of sex hormones and growth hormones are already having a dramatic impact on a teenager’s brain, he questions the long-term use of a drug that promotes a system like dopamine or serotonin. As he puts it: “You can’t take the kid off the drug after puberty and say, ‘Whoops, let’s go back and do puberty without the drug.’” Read on to learn how drugs like Adderall affect the brain — and why Anderson says that drug treatments should be a last resort in children with ADHD.

One in 10 American children is diagnosed with ADHD — but we still don’t understand the disorder. “There’s this traditional view that common brain disorders like ADHD, anxiety and depression are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, as if the brain were some kind of chemical soup that just needed a little more salt,” says Anderson (TEDxCaltech talk: Your brain is more than a bag of chemicals). Then there’s the emerging view, which is that ADHD and other common brain disorders are “actually disturbances in the neural circuits that mediate emotion, mood and affect.” This distinction matters most when parents, doctors and teachers are evaluating the pros and cons of behavioral, environmental and medical treatment options for a growing child, since current drug treatment options act by globally changing brain chemistry. “Many of the drugs that are taken for conditions like these were discovered by accident, not through an understanding of the underlying physiology of the disorder,” says Anderson. “It was just discovered that they work, and we don’t know how they work really or why they work.

Follow the link to read entire article.

Autistic people are not failed versions of “normal.” They’re different, not less

This article breaks my heart. Children forced to kill or be killed by Boko Haram. I thought my prayers came true when reading all the girls were released last week. Keep the girls and Nigeria in your prayers. 

DAKAR, Senegal — As it torments West Africa, Boko Haram is increasingly turning to children to carry out its crimes.

One of every five suicide bombers deployed by Boko Haram in the past two years has been a child, usually a girl, according to a report released Tuesday by Unicef.

Boko Haram used 44 children in suicide attacks last year, compared with only four in 2014, the report found.

The youngest bomber so far was thought to be 8 years old.

The report seeks to quantify one of the most chilling elements of Boko Haram, an Islamist extremist group that has assaulted the Lake Chad region of Africa for years with thievery, beheadings, kidnappings and the torching of entire villages. The group has killed thousands of people and caused a food crisis, leaving the area hungry and in tatters.

Toby Lanzer, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator for that region, said Boko Haram’s use of children as suicide bombers “really  beggars belief.”

“To me that’s the epitome of evil,” Mr. Lanzer told reporters during a briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York about his recent trip to northeastern Nigeria. “I cannot think of anything more horrifying.”

It was two years ago this week that the group kidnapped nearly 300 girls from a school in Chibok, Nigeria. Several dozen escaped early on, but most are still missing. Intelligence officials believe they are being used as human shields for Boko Haram leaders hiding in the Sambisa Forest in northeastern Nigeria.

Follow link to read entire article.  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/world/africa/boko-haram-children-suicide-bombers-unicef-report.html?_r=0

Xx  M

There are many viruses that have similar characteristics to dengue, yellow fever, and Zika that have the potential to emerge. We don’t know why Zika emerged now. But we know how to develop surveillance systems that will allow us to pick these viruses up if they start to move as Zika has.” This starting point was outlined by tropical medicine expert Duane Gubler at a World Health Organization (WHO) meeting in Geneva in early March. Gubler has spent his career studying tropical infectious diseases with an emphasis on dengue virus (DENV), a flavivirus closely related to Zika virus (ZIKV).1 His introductory presentation at the international meeting about the ZIKV challenge emphasized the complexity of the flavivirus–host relationship and the inevitability, thanks to urbanization and globalization, of emergence and spread of viruses that were previously confined to small, remote geographic areas.

To prevent and control ZIKV infection in humans, we must understand the virus and its vectors, the modes of transmission between mosquitoes and vertebrates and among humans, and the natural history of ZIKV disease. The main challenge today is that most of this knowledge is lacking. Of the 313 articles on Zika identified by a recent PubMed search, only 25 were published between 1952, when the virus was discovered, and 2009, when the first outbreak outside Africa and Asia was reported in the Journal2; 225 were published in 2016.

To read the full article follow the link;

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1603734?query=infectious-disease#.VweaPQYn9_h.twitter

Take care on where you travel. Look at the list of contries with active Zika. The Rio Olympics are left with a big issue. The Americans will not play because of the odds of getting Zika.

Good health to you a family.

:)

Melinda