Swine Flu Experts on Newswise

On Monday, April 27, 2009, the official swine flu outbreak death toll in Mexico reached 149, as reported by the Washington Post.  As frightened Mexican citizens try to avoid contracting the virus, the nation is practically under a voluntary quarantine. Schools are closed until May 6.  Mexican futbol teams play in empty stadiums.  Those brave enough to go out in public are encouraged to wear surgical masks. 

As public health officials keep a close eye on the outbreak, experts predict that infection rates may escalate and spread north to the U.S. and beyond.  Governments are already recommending against any non-essential travel to the U.S. from Europe, as reported by the AP today.

Newswise has created a Breaking News Channel dedicated to Swine Flu and experts on the outbreak.

Among the latest experts available:

Charles Ericsson, M.D., professor of internal medicine and director of Travel Medicine at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.  He answers 20 common questions about what you should know about the swine flu, including what are the symptoms, how long are people contagious, and what treatments are available. 

Health and science experts from Temple University.  These specialists can comment on a number of areas related to the outbreak, including: understanding the disease, preparedness and prevention of outbreak, and how the virus is spread.

More experts are being added throughout the day.  View them at the Breaking News Channel: Swine Flu Epidemic.  Other experts on general public health and infectious disease topics can be found at the Newswise Feature Channel: Infectious Diseases.

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Surgeon Removes Kidney Through the Belly Button

Imagine suffering from kidney disease for months, undergoing difficult and invasive treatments, only to find that surgery is necessary to remove a kidney.

Kidney surgery just got a whole lot easier, now that a surgeon has developed a new surgical technique that requires only one small incision to remove the diseased organ. By inserting a camera and two surgical instruments through the patient's belly button, Dr. Leslie Deane was able to remove a diseased kidney the size of an orange.

From the article:

Dr. Leslie Deane, assistant professor of urology and director of laparoscopy, endourology and robotic urologic surgery at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago, inserted a camera and two surgical instruments through a port placed in a one-inch incision in the patient's belly button and remove a diseased kidney the size of an orange. Surgical techniques have been advancing, as better surgical instruments and the introduction of cameras inside the body have made it possible to operate through small incisions. While laparoscopic approaches generally have fewer complications, shorter hospital stays, and faster recovery times than open surgery, they still usually require three to five incisions, each with attendant risks of bleeding, hernia, and scarring.

The technique called single incision laparoscopic surgery, or SILS, "gives us better pain control following surgery," said Deane. "And, of course, there is a much better cosmetic outcome for many patients. The small scar essentially disappears into their belly button."

Deane's surgical team included his chief resident Dr. Alexis Chesrow and senior resident Dr. Hector Pimentel and the nursing staff Elrayna Aten, RN and Annie Marrs, RN.

Chicago resident Eddie Bibbs, 55, is the mother of four grown children and has a number of grandchildren. She says she is not planning on wearing a bikini anytime soon, but was grateful that the simple incision kept bleeding to a minimum during her April 16 surgery to remove a diseased kidney. "I didn't need any transfusion at all," she said.

Bibbs' kidney had become infected months before, requiring insertion of a tube through the back. The kidney eventually failed, necessitating removal. She has been in and out of the hospital since last November and said she had barely been able to leave her house all winter.

On Friday, the day following the three-and-a-half-hour surgery, Bibbs was up walking the hallways of the hospital and looking forward to going home the next day.

"My daughter said I sound much better and I look much better," Bibbs said.

And, she added, "I feel much, much better!"

Deane expects SILS to become a more common procedure as new instruments are developed that are better adapted to the technique. The trend in surgery today is towards minimizing the size and number of incisions to reduce complications and scarring and improve recovery, he said. And with improvements in robotic technologies, the possibilities will be endless.

"I was also surprised to find that I was able to perform the surgery as quickly and safely through the single port as I would have expected from ordinary laparoscopic surgery," said Deane. "In 2009, the indications for 'open' kidney surgery are few."

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New Media Corner: Zakira on Twitter

As you get acquainted with using new media tools, whether it's for your own pleasure or for professional reasons, do you ever find yourself getting frustrated? Do you get furious over Facebook as you manage your profile and look for good apps? Do you dig yourself into a hole on Digg, or get red-faced mad over comments on Reddit? Are you positively twitching with what's-the-point-of-Twitter ennui?

You're not alone. As we continue to explore and develop our work in new media, it seems increasingly common for users to experience a level of pain and frustration with learning to use the hot new thing. We know there's something valuable there, like the light at the end of the tunnel, but sometimes you just get lost in the fray.

I asked my colleague, Zakira Beasley, Newswise Vice President for Business Development, to share some of her thoughts and feelings about getting oriented in the unfamilar world of micro-blogging on Twitter. She writes:

It’s week two for me and Twitter. Definitely more frustration than fun.

So what am I looking for? An understanding of what the challenges are for communications professionals. Discussions around problems and solutions, what does and does not work in this new world.

What am I finding? Not sure. Brief comments, many of which I can’t decipher or are responses to a thread I’ve not followed. Links to interesting articles, especially about social media, but then I get a phone call or an email needing response, and I forget where I was or why that was important.

Perhaps it’s my age, remembering floppy disks and C:> while working for a political consultant in 1984. I moved on to non-profit administration work, then a business degree, and many years in management for a computer software training company. Hmm, on reflection I see there have been so many “new worlds”, and it’s always taken time to learn, understand and apply.

So I’ll stick with the frustration a while longer, at least as long as Thom’s patience lasts. And I’ll keep looking for those kernels of connection, for something to share that was valuable to me, or made me smile, and I’ll pass those along. Maybe you’ll enjoy them as well.

I think Zakira's parting words there, "looking for those kernels of connection," are the heart of what drives us to master new media. A few successful interactions is sometimes all it takes.

Stick with it, Zakira, I'm sure you'll get there! And we'll do our best to keep you posted on our progress.

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Researchers Use Brain Interface to Post to Twitter

In early April, Adam Wilson posted a status update on the social networking Web site Twitter -- just by thinking about it.

Just 23 characters long, his message, "using EEG to send tweet," demonstrates a natural, manageable way in which "locked-in" patients can couple brain-computer interface technologies with modern communication tools. A University of Wisconsin-Madison biomedical engineering doctoral student, Wilson is among a growing group of researchers worldwide who aim to perfect a communication system for users whose bodies do not work, but whose brains function normally. Among those are people who have amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), brain-stem stroke or high spinal cord injury.

Some brain-computer interface systems employ an electrode-studded cap wired to a computer. The electrodes detect electrical signals in the brain -- essentially, thoughts -- and translate them into physical actions, such as a cursor motion on a computer screen. "We started thinking that moving a cursor on a screen is a good scientific exercise," says Justin Williams, a UW-Madison assistant professor of biomedical engineering and Wilson's adviser. "But when we talk to people who have locked-in syndrome or a spinal-cord injury, their No. 1 concern is communication."

In collaboration with research scientist Gerwin Schalk and colleagues at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, N.Y., Williams and Wilson began developing a simple, elegant communication interface based on brain activity related to changes in an object on screen.

The interface consists, essentially, of a keyboard displayed on a computer screen. "The way this works is that all the letters come up, and each one of them flashes individually," says Williams. "And what your brain does is, if you're looking at the 'R' on the screen and all the other letters are flashing, nothing happens. But when the 'R' flashes, your brain says, 'Hey, wait a minute. Something's different about what I was just paying attention to.' And you see a momentary change in brain activity."

Wilson, who used the interface to post the Twitter update, likens it to texting on a cell phone. "You have to press a button four times to get the character you want," he says of texting. "So this is kind of a slow process at first."

However, as with texting, users improve as they practice using the interface. "I've seen people do up to eight characters per minute," says Wilson.

A free service, Twitter has been called a "micro-blogging" tool. User updates, called tweets, have a 140-character limit -- a manageable message length that fits locked-in users' capabilities, says Williams.

Tweets are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other Twitter users who have signed up to receive them. "So someone could simply tell family and friends how they're feeling today," says Williams. "People at the other end can be following their thread and never know that the person is disabled. That would really be an enabling type of communication means for those people, and I think it would make them feel, in the online world, that they're not that much different from everybody else. That's why we did these things."

Schalk agrees. "This is one of the first -- and perhaps most useful -- integrations of brain-computer interface techniques with Internet technologies to date," he says.

While widespread implementation of brain-computer interface technologies is still years down the road, Wadsworth Center researchers, as well as those at the University of Tubingen in Germany, are starting in-home trials of the equipment. Wilson, who will finish his Ph.D. soon and begin postdoctoral research at Wadsworth, plans to include Twitter in the trials.

Williams hopes the Twitter application is the nudge researchers need to refine development of the in-home technology. "A lot of the things that we've been doing are more scientific exercises," he says. "This is one of the first examples where we've found something that would be immediately useful to a much larger community of people with neurological deficits."

Funding for the research comes from the National Institutes of Health, the UW-Madison Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, the UW-Madison W.H. Coulter Translational Research Partnership in Biomedical Engineering and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

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Most Popular: Incompetent Bosses Get Promoted by Acting Dominant

Those who act more dominantly are perceived as more competent, even if their actual skills don't measure up. The guy (or gal) in charge isn't really competent for the job. How can this be?

Researchers at the University of California explored this phenomenon in their study titled, "Why Do Dominant Personalities Attain Influence in Face-to-Face Groups? The Competence-Signaling Effects of Trait Dominance."  In the study, the most dominant personalities were rated the highest for such qualities as general intelligence, dependability, and self-discipline. At the same time, subjects perceived less outspoken workers as having less desirable traits, giving them high scores for being conventional and uncreative.

Managers may want to look a little closer when judging their employees' true productivity and value. The study's results may also help individuals achieve improvement in their own reputations - just by speaking up.

From the article:

Anybody in the workplace, and perhaps politics, has probably experienced this perplexing phenomenon. The guy (or gal) in charge isn't really competent for the job. How can this be? According to a study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, those who act more dominantly are perceived as more competent, even if their actual skills don't measure up.

Organizational behavior and industrial relations Associate Professor Cameron Anderson and doctoral candidate Gavin Kilduff documented their findings in a recently published paper, "Why Do Dominant Personalities Attain Influence in Face-to-Face Groups? The Competence-Signaling Effects of Trait Dominance." To test this "great pretender" theory amongst perceived leaders, Anderson and Kilduff recruited 68 unacquainted students and divided them into 17 same-gender teams of four people each. The participants' average age: 21 years. The researchers gave each team 45 minutes to design a mock non-profit environmental organization or a for-profit Web site. The winning team would receive a $400 prize. More importantly, the experiment required each participant to rate his or her colleagues' level of influence on the group, and each participant's level of competence. The sessions were videotaped so the researchers and an independent group of observers could also rate the students' work. The independent observers were selected to reflect the subjects' peer group.

The results revealed that team members with the most dominant personalities were rated the highest for such qualities as general intelligence, dependability, and self-discipline. At the same time, subjects perceived less outspoken workers as having less desirable traits, giving them high scores for being conventional and uncreative.

To be fair, Anderson and Kilduff wanted to give the alpha standouts of the group the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps these newly anointed leaders were indeed, more competent. A second experiment left no debate.

In round two, researchers asked the teams of students to solve computational problems taken from old versions of the Graduate Management Aptitude Test (GMAT). Participants reported their previous Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) math scores to researchers prior to trying to solve the GMAT problems. When it was time to reveal the answers out loud, the people who spoke up more were, again, the ones their teammates deemed as the leaders of the group. In addition, it didn't matter if the chosen leaders offered the correct answers, only that they offered more responses. What's more, the leaders didn't even have to provide the final solution to the problem to be exalted to the top of the heap.

Anderson and Kilduff's work redefines what it means to be dominant in the context of influence. Past studies have aligned dominant behavior with aggressive, heavy handed tactics. This study found dominant people attain influence by displaying competence, "These findings suggest that dominant individuals may ascent group hierarchies by appearing helpful to the group's overall success as opposed to aggressively grabbing power."

While the findings may be troubling to some, they may be helpful to managers who may want to look a little closer when judging their employees' true productivity and value. The study's results may also help individuals achieve improvement in their own reputations - just by speaking up.

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Most Shared: Exercise Makes Kids Learn, Focus Better

"No Child Left Behind" resulted in limited opportunities for students to be physically active during the school day. That may soon change, if the results of a study suggesting the academic benefits of physical education classes, recess periods and after-school exercise is taken seriously by policy-makers.

"The goal of the study was to see if a single acute bout of moderate exercise - walking - was beneficial for cognitive function in a period of time afterward," said lead researcher Charles Hillman, director of the Neurocognitive Kinesiology Laboratory at Illinois.

Results of the study suggest that physical activity may increase students' cognitive control - or ability to pay attention - and also result in better performance on academic achievement tests.

From the articles:

As school districts across the nation revamped curricula to meet requirements of the federal "No Child Left Behind" Act, opportunities for children to be physically active during the school day diminished significantly.

Future mandates, however, might be better served by taking into account findings from a University of Illinois study suggesting the academic benefits of physical education classes, recess periods and after-school exercise programs. The research, led by Charles Hillman, a professor of kinesiology and community health and the director of the Neurocognitive Kinesiology Laboratory at Illinois, suggests that physical activity may increase students' cognitive control - or ability to pay attention - and also result in better performance on academic achievement tests. "The goal of the study was to see if a single acute bout of moderate exercise - walking - was beneficial for cognitive function in a period of time afterward," Hillman said. "This question has been asked before by our lab and others, in young adults and older adults, but it's never been asked in children. That's why it's an important question."

For each of three testing criteria, researchers noted a positive outcome linking physical activity, attention and academic achievement.

Study participants were 9-year-olds (eight girls, 12 boys) who performed a series of stimulus-discrimination tests known as flanker tasks, to assess their inhibitory control.

On one day, students were tested following a 20-minute resting period; on another day, after a 20-minute session walking on a treadmill. Students were shown congruent and incongruent stimuli on a screen and asked to push a button to respond to incongruencies. During the testing, students were outfitted with an electrode cap to measure electroencephalographic (EEG) activity.

"What we found is that following the acute bout of walking, children performed better on the flanker task," Hillman said. "They had a higher rate of accuracy, especially when the task was more difficult. Along with that behavioral effect, we also found that there were changes in their event-related brain potentials (ERPs) - in these neuroelectric signals that are a covert measure of attentional resource allocation."

One aspect of the neuroelectric activity of particular interest to researchers is a measure referred to as the P3 potential. Hillman said the amplitude of the potential relates to the allocation of attentional resources.

"What we found in this particular study is, following acute bouts of walking, children had a larger P3 amplitude, suggesting that they are better able to allocate attentional resources, and this effect is greater in the more difficult conditions of the flanker test, suggesting that when the environment is more noisy - visual noise in this case - kids are better able to gate out that noise and selectively attend to the correct stimulus and act upon it."

In an effort to see how performance on such tests relates to actual classroom learning, researchers next administered an academic achievement test. The test measured performance in three areas: reading, spelling and math.

Again, the researchers noted better test results following exercise.

"And when we assessed it, the effect was largest in reading comprehension," Hillman said. In fact, he said, "If you go by the guidelines set forth by the Wide Range Achievement Test, the increase in reading comprehension following exercise equated to approximately a full grade level.

"Thus, the exercise effect on achievement is not statistically significant, but a meaningful difference."

Hillman said he's not sure why the students' performance on the spelling and math portions of the test didn't show as much of an improvement as did reading comprehension, but suspects it may be related to design of the experiment. Students were tested on reading comprehension first, leading him to speculate that too much time may have elapsed between the physical activity and the testing period for those subjects.

"Future attempts will definitely look at the timing," he said. Subsequent testing also will introduce other forms of physical-activity testing.

"Treadmills are great," Hillman said. "But kids don't walk on treadmills, so it's not an externally valid form of exercise for most children. We currently have an ongoing project that is looking at treadmill walking at the same intensity relative to a Wii Fit game - which is a way in which kids really do exercise."

Still, given the preliminary study's positive outcomes on the flanker task, ERP data and academic testing, study co-author Darla Castelli believes these early findings could be used to inform useful curricular changes.

"Modifications are very easy to integrate," Castelli said. For example, she recommends that schools make outside playground facilities accessible before and after school.

"If this is not feasible because of safety issues, then a school-wide assembly containing a brief bout of physical activity is a possible way to begin each day," she said. "Some schools are using the Intranet or internal TV channels to broadcast physical activity sessions that can be completed in each classroom."

Among Castelli's other recommendations for school personnel interested in integrating physical activity into the curriculum:

* scheduling outdoor recess as a part of each school day;

* offering formal physical education 150 minutes per week at the elementary level, 225 minutes at the secondary level;

* encouraging classroom teachers to integrate physical activity into learning.

An example of how physical movement could be introduced into an actual lesson would be "when reading poetry (about nature or the change of seasons), students could act like falling leaves," she said.

The U. of I. study appears in the current issue of the journal Neuroscience. Along with Castelli and Hillman, co-authors are U. of I. psychology professor Art Kramer and kinesiology and community health graduate student Mathew Pontifex and undergraduate Lauren Raine.

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Most Shared: Teachers Failing at Sex-Ed

A study of sex education in Illinois public schools found that only 42 percent of sex education teachers passed the comprehensiveness test. The four basic topics required to be rated "comprehensive:" abstinence until marriage or older, HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and contraception.

"For this study, we set the bar for comprehensiveness fairly low relative to what most medical and public health organizations recommend," said senior author Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, "and one out of three programs failed to clear it."

Nearly two-thirds of 12th graders have engaged in sexual intercourse, and studies suggest that accurate knowledge can delay sexual debut and increase the use of condoms or other forms of contraception when adolescents do become sexually active.

From the article:

A study of sex education in Illinois public schools found that one out of three teachers did not meet a very forgiving definition of comprehensive instruction, researchers from the University of Chicago Medical Center report in the February 2008 issue of the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.

Only 65 percent of teachers who responded to the survey covered the four basic topics required to be rated "comprehensive:" abstinence until marriage or older, HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted diseases, and contraception. When the researchers added a widely recommended fifth topic--where to get condoms, birth control and health related services--only 42 percent of sex education teachers passed the comprehensiveness test. The survey also found that 30 percent of the State's sex-education teachers had never received sex-education training, well above the national average of 18 percent. Although most teachers with training reported that they felt, "very comfortable" teaching adolescents about sex, only 56 percent of those who lacked such training said they felt as comfortable.

"For this study, we set the bar for comprehensiveness fairly low relative to what most medical and public health organizations recommend," said senior author Stacy Tessler Lindau, MD, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology and medicine at the University of Chicago, "and one out of three programs failed to clear it."

"Our children learn many of the skills they need to be healthy citizens and to take responsibility for their own health in school," she said. "That should include information about sexual aspects of health. Physicians who care for adolescents need to know what students are, or are not learning, in school in order to fill gaps caused by deficits in program content, quality and teacher training."

Previous studies showed that nearly two-thirds of 12th graders have engaged in sexual intercourse, and that accurate knowledge can delay sexual debut and increase the use of condoms or other forms of contraception when adolescents do become sexually active.

"Most parents support school-based sex education and teens regard it as an important source of information," Lindau said, "yet we found that several important health topics and skills are omitted, more often than not, from most Illinois public school sex-education criteria."

"Uninformed teens often become uninformed young adults," said second author Adjoa S. Tetteh, research assistant and a college peer sex educator. "Working with college students, I have witnessed this firsthand. Many students come to college with years of sexual experience, but are learning, for the first time, about effective ways to prevent STIs and unintended pregnancy."

The researchers used data collected by NORC, a survey research firm. NORC mailed self-administered questionnaires to 335 sex education teachers from 201 public middle and high schools in 112 Illinois school districts in the 2003-04 school year. Sixty-two percent of the teachers, representing 91 percent of schools, responded.

Teachers were asked which of 17 possible topics they taught and, if they omitted certain topics, to explain why. They were also asked about their training and how they would grade the sex education curriculum.

The researchers found that 93 percent of Illinois Schools offered sex education; seven percent did not.
The most frequently taught topics, covered by 96 percent of teachers, were HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. Almost 90 percent of teachers covered abstinence. Among those who taught abstinence, 57 percent emphasized that it was the "best alternative," 39 percent said it was the "only alternative," and four percent described it as "one alternative."

Practical skills--such as contraception, condom use, decision-making and communicating with a partner--and morally debated topics, such as abortion or sexual orientation, were among the least frequently taught. Teachers who had not received sex-education training were less likely to spend time on practical or morally debated topics.

Of the 17 topics, emergency contraception was mentioned least, taught by only 30 percent of teachers. Only 32 percent of teachers brought up homosexuality or sexual orientation, 34 percent taught how to use condoms, 37 percent taught how to use other forms of birth control, 39 percent discussed abortion and 47 percent taught students where to access contraception and sexual-health services.

The most common reason for omitting a topic was "not part of the curriculum." Those who omitted condom use, however, most often cited "school or district policy."

Teachers gave themselves the highest grades for instruction on reproductive basics and abstinence, with nearly four out of five ranking that part of the curriculum as good or excellent. About two-thirds gave themselves comparable grades for teaching their students about the emotional consequences of sex, dealing with pressures to have sex, or where to access contraception or services.

Although about half rated their instruction on how to use condoms or other forms of birth control as good or excellent, a quarter rated instruction on these topics average and a quarter rated them as poor or very poor.

"Although a recent study has called into question the effectiveness of abstinence-only sex education, the trend over the last ten years, supported by federal incentives, has been to emphasize abstinence and exclude information about contraception," said Lindau. "Given that a large number of young people are sexually active, we worry that such restrictive approaches leave students unprepared to prevent pregnancy and/or sexually transmitted diseases."

"In most cases," she added, "they are not even given access to information about how to talk about these issues or where to get help should they need it. Doctors need to be aware of this and should be proactive in initiating discussion about sexuality with parents and adolescents. Doctors may also be an important resource for providing teachers with medically accurate information and training."
"Our study provides important new data from the teachers' perspective," said study co-author Melissa Gilliam, associate professor and section chief of family planning and contraceptive research at the University of Chicago. "It supports other recent studies showing that large numbers of teens, especially low-income and youth of color, received no instruction about birth control methods before they first had sex."

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Most Popular: Parkinsons Meds Make Patients Go Wild with Sex and Gambling

One in six patients taking drugs for the treatment of Parkinson's disease are turning into hypersexual, compulsive gamblers.

The culprit meds are part of a family of drugs called dopamine agonists, a class of drugs that include pramipexole and ropinirole. They are commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease, and sometimes restless legs syndrome. They stimulate brain limbic circuits, which are thought to be fundamental centers of reward-driven and hedonistic behaviors.

The researchers analyzed the medical records of 66 Parkinson's patients taking dopamine agonists for their Parkinson's disease, and the findings were definitive. Seven patients experiencing new-onset compulsive gambling or hypersexuality were taking dopamine agonists in therapeutic doses. None of the other Parkinson's disease patients developed compulsive gambling habits or hypersexuality, including 28 patients on lower doses, and 201 patients not taking dopamine agonists at all.

From the article:

A new study conducted at Mayo Clinic reports that one in six patients receiving therapeutic doses of certain drugs for Parkinson's disease develops new-onset, potentially destructive behaviors, notably compulsive gambling or hypersexuality.


Dopamine agonists are a class of drugs that include pramipexole and ropinirole. They are commonly used to treat Parkinson's disease, but low doses also are used for restless legs syndrome. They uniquely stimulate brain limbic circuits, which are thought to be fundamental substrates for emotional, reward and hedonistic behaviors.


"The 2005 case series alerted us that something bad was happening to some unfortunate people. This study was done to assess the likelihood that this effect would happen to the average Parkinson's patient treated with these agents," says J. Michael Bostwick, M.D., Mayo Clinic psychiatrist who spearheaded the new study. It is published in the April issue of Mayo Clinic Proceedings.


The researchers analyzed the medical records of patients with Parkinson's disease residing in counties surrounding Rochester, Minn., who received their primary neurological care at Mayo Clinic in Rochester between 2004 and 2006. This group included 267 patients. Of those, 66 were taking dopamine agonists for their Parkinson's disease. Of those 66, 38 were taking the drugs in therapeutic doses (doses expected to be at least minimally beneficial).


The findings were definitive. Seven patients experiencing new-onset compulsive gambling or hypersexuality were taking dopamine agonists in therapeutic doses. None of the other Parkinson's disease patients developed compulsive gambling habits or hypersexuality, including the 28 patients on subtherapeutic dopamine agonist doses or the other 201 patients not taking dopamine agonists. None of the 178 patients treated only with the standard drug for Parkinson's disease, carbidopa/levodopa, developed these behaviors.


"It is crucial for clinicians prescribing dopamine agonists to apprise patients as well as their spouses or partners about this potential side effect. The onset can be insidious and overlooked until life-altering problems develop," says J. Eric Ahlskog, M.D., Ph.D., Mayo Clinic neurologist who co-authored and treated many of the patients in the 2005 study. "It also is worth noting that the affected patients were all taking therapeutic doses. Very low doses, such as those used to treat restless legs syndrome, carry much less risk."


"For some patients, a reduction in the dose of the dopamine agonist may prove to be sufficient treatment," says Dr. Ahlskog, "although total elimination of the offending drug is often necessary."

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Most Popular: Task Force Recommends Screening Adolescents for Clinical Depression

Adolescents should be screened for clinical depression, but only when appropriate systems are in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care.  Clinical depression is an important cause of poor health and lower quality of life among children and adolescents.  Depression can cause difficulties in school and disruptions of family and social relationships

"Depression in adolescents has a significant impact on both mental and physical health, and adolescents with depression have more hospitalizations for psychiatric and medical issues than adolescents who are not depressed," said Task Force Chair Ned Calonge, M.D., who is also chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

Depressed children and adolescents are at an increased risk of suicide, which is the third-leading cause of death among people age 15 to 24 and the sixth-leading cause of death among those age 5 to 14. Adolescents suffering from clinical depression are also more likely to suffer from depression in early adulthood.

From the article:

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force now recommends screening adolescents for clinical depression only when appropriate systems are in place to ensure accurate diagnosis, treatment and follow-up care. This applies to all adolescents 12 to 18 years of age. In a separate recommendation, the Task Force found insufficient evidence to assess the balance of benefits and harms of screening children 7 to 11 years of age for clinical depression. The recommendations and the accompanying summary of evidence appear in the April issue of Pediatrics.

The Task Force reviewed new evidence on the benefits and harms of screening children and adolescents for clinical depression, the accuracy of screening tests administered in the primary care setting and the benefits and risks of treating clinical depression using psychotherapy and/or medications in patients 7 to 18 years of age. Clinical depression is an important cause of poor health and lower quality of life among children and adolescents. Depression can cause difficulties in school and disruptions of family and social relationships as well as diminished quality of life.

"Depression in adolescents has a significant impact on both mental and physical health, and adolescents with depression have more hospitalizations for psychiatric and medical issues than adolescents who are not depressed," said Task Force Chair Ned Calonge, M.D., who is also chief medical officer for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. "It is important that adolescents are diagnosed and treated for clinical depression in order to improve their health and quality of life, especially if they have a family history of depression."

There is adequate evidence that treating adolescents with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), psychotherapy or combined therapy (SSRIs and psychotherapy) result in decreased clinical depression symptoms. Treating clinically depressed youths with SSRIs is associated with an increased risk of suicidality (suicidal thoughts, preparation and attempts of suicide) and, therefore, should only be considered if careful clinical supervision is possible.

Depressed children and adolescents are at an increased risk of suicide, which is the third-leading cause of death among people age 15 to 24 and the sixth-leading cause of death among those age 5 to 14. Adolescents suffering from clinical depression are also more likely to suffer from depression in early adulthood. Nearly 6 percent of adolescents 13 to 18 years of age are clinically depressed, and it is more common among girls than boys.

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Game Studies Download 2009: Top 10 Big Ideas In Gaming

Video game experts and game studies researchers came up with the top 10 most unexpected findings for video game designers over the past year. At the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, audience members -- both at the panel and via Twitter -- ranked the findings in order of their importance. Topics include everything from advances in game design to the very fundamentals of gaming and competition as a cultural value.

"Asking the audience to order the top 10 gave us an opportunity to get their feedback on which design problems feel more and less relevant to them. So not only can game designers learn what researchers are thinking about games, but game researchers can also look at the list and gain an understanding of the issues at the front of the minds of game developers," said game studies researcher Ian Bogost, associate professor at Georgia Tech.

The topics as ranked by audience members are:

10. Ground rules: The social contract and the magic circle
9. Play to win or win to play? The material culture of gaming
8. Game sound: An introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design

#7-1 after the jump

From the article:

Thursday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, game studies researchers presented their list of the top 10 most unexpected findings for video game designers over the past year. This marks the fourth year that researchers Ian Bogost, associate professor at Georgia Tech; Jane McGonigal, director of games research and development at the Institute for the Future; and Mia Consalvo, associate professor at Ohio University, have presented their list. But this year audience members -- both at the panel and via Twitter -- ranked the findings in order of their importance.
"Asking the audience to order the top 10 gave us an opportunity to get their feedback on which design problems feel more and less relevant to them. So not only can game designers learn what researchers are thinking about games, but game researchers can also look at the list and gain an understanding of the issues at the front of the minds of game developers," said Bogost. Click here for the slide presentation of the top 10 research findings: http://www.slideshare.net/avantgame/game-studies-download-2009-top-10-research-findings
The findings of the Game Studies Download 2009 are:

10. Stewart Woods: "(Play) Ground rules: The social contract and the magic circle" http://obs.obercom.pt
9. Jose Zagal and Amy Bruckman: "Novices, gamers, and scholars: Exploring the challenges of teaching about games" http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/zagal_bruckman
8. Karen Collins: "Game sound: An introduction to the history, theory, and practice of video game music and sound design"
7. Charlie Briendahl: "Play to win or win to play? The material culture of gaming"
6. Gareth Schott: "Relating the pleasures of violent game texts"
5. Jesper Juul: "Fear of failing: The many meanings of difficulty in video games"
4. Matt Barton: "How's the weather: Simulating weather in virtual environments" http://gamestudies.org/0801/articles/barton
3. Betsy James DiSalvo, Kevin Crowley and Roy Norwood: "Learning in context: Digital games and young black men"
2. Michael Nitsche: "Video game spaces: Image, play, and structure in 3D worlds"
1. Susana Tosca & Lisbeth Klastrup: "Because it just looks cool!' Fashion as character performance--the case of WoW" http://www.jvwresearch.org

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