Natural therapy: Among

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Sunday, August 11, 2013

Fifty shades a popular read among Guantánamo detainees

by Dr.Enozia Vakil on August 2, 2013 at 11:59 News Lifestyle even among the inmates of great importance of Guantanamo, Sado-masochistic bestseller 50 shades of gray is the most popular read. Fifty Shades a Popular Read Among Guantanamo Detainees
"Rather than the Koran, the book that is most in demand by the (Camp seven inmates) is 'Fifty shades of grey,'" House Democrat Jim Moran said in comments confirmed Wednesday by his spokesman.

"That they have read the entire series in French," said Moran, who supports moves to close the American detention center in southeastern Cuba.

"I guess that there are not many things." These guys are going nowhere, until hell. ?

The unexpected revelation of "Fifty shades" is come would have during a shot which the members of the delegation had with the base commander, Chief Medical Officer and responsible for formerly secret Camp seven, the safest part of the installation at Guantanamo Bay.

British author E.L. James has sold over 70 million copies of his trilogy of erotic romance novels that describe the use of handcuffs and blindfolded during sexual intercourse.

Camp seven is a maximum security, and its inmates of great importance - including five men charged in the attacks of September 11, 2001 - are often hooded and candcuffed when transferred to other parts of the installation.

Journalists are allowed to visit Guantanamo, where detainees have access to censored reading and movies, but seven Camp is off limits.

"We are discussing our detainees of great importance except in the more generic terms," said Lieutenant-Colonel Todd Breasseale at HuffPost. ?In addition, we are not discussing the assertions made by the members of the Congress.?

Moran spokesman, said MEP 'doesn't care' what read prisoners of great importance.

"His most important point was that they do not represent the majority of detainees at Guantanamo, 86 of them have been cleared by the Department of defense... to be transferred to other countries for release or continued detention abroad."

President Barack Obama has pledged to close the centre when he took office in 2009, but the military prison created in the wake of September 11 still has 166 men.

Most who held there was ever charged or tried and 70 detainees were taking part in a hunger strike from July 23, with 46 of them being fed through nasal tubes, according to the army.

Moran was joined on the delegation member Gerry Connolly House, Democratic Senate Democratic Tim Kaine and House Republican Frank Wolf.

Wolf insisted the Guantanamo guards "did a remarkable job, despite the constant threat of verbal and physical abuse, the massive disruption and 'projections', when inmates mix the urine and feces with milk and throw in the faces of guards. ''

Despite these challenges, the installation is performed in a "safe, human, transparent and, above all, in a lawful manner," said Wolf, who is opposed to the closure of Guantanamo.

"There is no torture. There is no abuse. Prisoners are treated with respect. ?

Source-AFP

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Friday, August 9, 2013

Researchers: Childhood Economic Status Affects Substance Use Among Young Adults

by Rukmani Krishna on? August 02, 2013 at 12:09 AM Lifestyle News According to researchers at Duke Medicine, children who grow up in poverty are more likely than wealthier children to smoke cigarettes, but they are less likely to binge drink and are no more prone to use marijuana. Researchers: Childhood Economic Status Affects Substance Use Among Young Adults
The researchers also found that economic strains in early life - including family worries about paying bills or needing to sell possessions for cash - independently erode a child's self-control, regardless of strong parenting in adolescence. Lack of self-control often leads to substance use.

The findings, appearing July 30, 2013, in the Journal of Pediatric Psychology, debunk common assumptions about who abuses substances, and provide a basis for better approaches to prevent young people from falling into drug and alcohol addiction.

"Poverty during childhood not only appears to affect child development, but can have lasting effects on the types of health choices made during adolescence and early adulthood, especially as it relates to cigarette smoking," said senior author Bernard Fuemmeler, Ph.D., MPH, MS, associate professor in Community and Family Medicine at Duke University School of Medicine. "Economic strains may shape an individual''s capacity for self-control by diminishing opportunities for self-regulation, or affecting important brain structures."

Fuemmeler and colleagues at Duke set out to examine the direct effect of childhood economic strains on smoking, binge drinking, and marijuana use in young adults. They also sought to determine how financial difficulties impact self-control, and how positive parenting might mitigate the tendency to use drugs and alcohol.

The group analyzed data from 1,285 children and caregivers included in a representative sample of U.S. families studied from 1986-2009. Economic status was measured by annual family income, plus a survey with questions about economic problems such as difficulty paying bills or postponing medical care. Additional information was gathered to gauge childhood self-control and parental interactions.

Among the study participants who were transitioning to adulthood, young people who lived in poverty as children were far more likely to become regular cigarette smokers than children who grew up in wealthier households. The impoverished children also scored low on self-control measures.

"Poor self-control may be a product of limited learning resources and opportunities for developing appropriate behaviors," Fuemmeler said.

Binge drinking, however, was much more common among the wealthier young people. And surprisingly, those who had good self-control as children were more likely to engage in heavy episodic drinking as young adults.

Neither wealth nor poverty appeared to influence marijuana use, although positive parenting did reduce the use of this drug. Parents who were nurturing and accepting, in fact, diminished the likelihood of young people using any of the substances.

The researchers also found no correlation between economic hardship and poor parenting - a contradiction to some other studies.

"We suspected we'd find a relationship between parenting and economic problems - the idea that economic strains may cause parents to have less capacity to deal with their children, but that relationship wasn't there," Fuemmeler said. "That means it's not necessarily poverty that affects the parenting strategy, but poverty that affects the children's self-control."

Fuemmeler said the findings are important given the increase in U.S. children living in poverty. The U.S. Census Bureau reported 22 percent of children lived in poverty in 2010, compared to 18 percent in 2000.

"Continued work is needed to better understand how economic strains may influence the development of self-control, as well as to identify other potential mediators between economic strains and substance use outcomes," Fuemmeler said.

In addition to Fuemmeler, study authors include Chien-Ti Lee, Joseph McClernon, Scott H. Kollins and Kevin Prybol.

The National Institutes of Health (RO1 DA030487), the National Cancer Institute (K07CA124905) and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (K24DA023464) funded the study.

Source-Newswise

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Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Short Course of Self-Defense Training can Reduce Sexual Assaults Among Kenyan Girls

"Self-defense training taught these young girls to stand up and say 'no' with confidence, and empowered them to escalate their own defense to a higher level, if necessary," said Neville Golden, MD, senior author of the new study, which is now available online on the Journal of Adolescent Health website. "To our knowledge, this is the first study to demonstrate that a self-empowerment/self-defense course can reduce the incidence of rape in adolescent girls," added Golden, who is a professor of pediatrics at Stanford and the division chief of adolescent medicine at Packard Children's.

The study looked at 402 girls who participated in a self-defense program developed by a Kenya-based nongovernmental organization, No Means No Worldwide, that taught them verbal and physical self-defense techniques, and gave them information about how to get help if they were assaulted. Conducted in high schools, the program was designed to combat a culture in which discussing sexual assault is taboo.

In the 10 months after receiving self-defense training, more than half of these girls reported using what they had learned to fend off would-be attackers. The proportion of them who were raped fell from 24.6 percent in the year before training to 9.2 percent in the 10-month period after.

"There is a strict code of silence among rape victims in Kenya, especially with the stigma of HIV and AIDS," said Jake Sinclair, MD, the lead author of the new study and a pediatrician at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, Calif. "Typically, no one is going to admit that they were raped. Victim-blaming is the norm." Sinclair and his wife, Lee, co-founded No Means No Worldwide and have developed sexual-assault prevention curricula for several audiences in Kenya, including self-defense programs for girls and women, and educational programs to help boys recognize the harm inflicted by sexual assault.

The subjects of the study were 522 high school girls, ages 14 to 21, in two impoverished Nairobi slums: 402 received 12 hours of self-defense training over six weeks, as well as two-hour refresher courses at three-, six-, nine- and 10-month intervals; 120 in a comparison group received a one-hour life-skills class that is the current national standard in Kenya. Before and 10 months after the training, both groups answered anonymous questionnaires about their recent experiences of rape.

At the start of the study, nearly one in four girls reported that they had been forced them to have sex in the prior year; 90 percent of the victims knew their attackers. The study focused on rape and did not assess the entire range of behaviors classified as sexual assault under U.S. laws.

Among girls who received self-defense training, 56.4 percent used the skills they learned to fend off attackers in the subsequent 10 months. Of these girls, half used verbal skills alone, one-third started with verbal skills and added physical skills, and 17 percent used physical skills alone. Not only did total assaults drop sharply, but assaults by the two most common groups of perpetrators, boyfriends and relatives, decreased significantly. After receiving training, girls who were raped were more likely to seek help following an attack.

In contrast, among girls who had life-skills classes, the proportion who became victims of rape remained about the same.

"We were pretty stunned that the self-defense training was so effective," Sinclair said. "From the testimonials we collected, we saw that even a small girl could disable an attacker and get away, again and again."

The self-defense classes, which trained and employed local Kenyan women as instructors, were also cost-effective: providing the training cost $1.75 per student, whereas immediate after-care for rape in Kenya costs $86, a figure that does not account for long-term costs such as new HIV infections or unwanted pregnancies.

No Means No Worldwide is now testing the effectiveness of their curriculum for boys, which focuses on teaching boys not to perpetrate sexual assault. They are also working to disseminate the girls' self-defense curriculum more widely.

"Often, people focus on women as victims," said Cynthia Kapphahn, MD, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics at Stanford and an adolescent medicine specialist at Packard Children's who was also an author of the study. "This work shows that it's also important to focus on them as empowered beings; that approach can have an important role in a woman's ability to protect herself."

Source-Eurekalert

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Monday, July 8, 2013

Drug-Resistant Bacteria Linked With Livestock Found Among Industrial Livestock Workers

by Kathy Jones on? July 05, 2013 at 10:44 PM Environmental Health A test of nose samples among livestock workers in North Carolina by American researchers reveals the presence of drug-resistant bacteria associated with livestock among industrial workers and not in antibiotic-free workers. Drug-Resistant Bacteria Linked With Livestock Found Among Industrial Livestock Workers
The drug-resistant bacteria examined were Staphylococcus aureus, commonly known as "Staph," which include the well-known bug MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). New Staph strains are emerging in people who have close contact with livestock animals and for this reason have been given the name livestock-associated Staph. While everyone in the study had direct or indirect contact with livestock, only industrial workers carried antibiotic-resistant Staph with multiple genetic characteristics linked to livestock. The study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help, the George Washington University, and the Statens Serum Institute, published July 2 by the journal PLOS ONE, confirms earlier findings in Iowa and raises concern about antibiotics use in livestock production.

Many industrial livestock operations raise animals in large conferment buildings and use antibiotics, including non-therapeutically in animals' feed and water to promote their growth. Previous studies have detected strains of drug-resistant S. aureus from livestock, first among farm workers, and subsequently in hospital and community settings in Europe. In the United States, such strains have been detected among industrial livestock operation workers in Iowa and now North Carolina making scientists concerned that these bacteria could follow a similar trajectory into the community. North Carolina is a major livestock producer, ranking second behind Iowa in hog production in the United States.

S. aureus can cause a range of illnesses in humans, from minor to life-threatening skin, bloodstream, respiratory, urinary and surgical site infections. Like most illnesses caused by bacteria, S. aureus infections are treated with antibiotics. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some Staph cannot be killed by antibiotics, meaning they are resistant. MRSA is a strain of Staph bacteria that is resistant to methicillin and certain first-line antibiotics called beta-lactams. Infections with drug-resistant strains, like MRSA, can be particularly difficult to treat.

The study was based on interviews and nose swabs that were collected and analyzed from individuals who worked at two different types of livestock operations in North Carolina. At industrial livestock operations, animals are grown in large confinement buildings using antibiotics. At antibiotic-free livestock operations, animals are grown without the use of antibiotics, typically outdoors on pasture. Researchers tested the S. aureus isolated from nose swabs for resistance to a range of antibiotics and for genetic markers considered to indicate that the bacteria may have come from livestock.

"This study shows that these livestock-associated strains are present among workers at industrial livestock operations and that these strains are resistant not just to methicillin, but to multiple antibiotics - including antibiotics that are used to treat human infections," said Christopher Heaney, PhD, corresponding author of the study and assistant professor of Environmental Health Sciences and Epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Workers were not experiencing Staph infections at the time of the study, but when antibiotic resistant bacteria do cause infections, they can be harder to treat. Researchers found that S. aureus that were multidrug-resistant were roughly twice as prevalent among individuals exposed to the industrial compared to the antibiotic-free livestock operation environment and S. aureus that were resistant to tetracycline - an antibiotic that has been used in industrial livestock production since the 1950's - were 19 times as prevalent among industrial compared to antibiotic-free livestock operation workers.

Source-Eurekalert

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Monday, July 1, 2013

Digital "Dementia" on the Rise Among Youth

Researchers at South Korea's Balance Brain Centre over reliance on gadgets such as smartphones and game devices has deteriorated the cognitive abilities of young people to an extent that is normally seen in patients who suffer head injuries or psychiatric illnesses.

The researchers said that constant use of smartphones and gaming devices leads to underdevelopment of the right side of the brain, associated with concentration, which affects attention and memory span and may lead to early onset of dementia in 15 percent of cases.

"Over-use of smartphones and game devices hampers the balanced development of the brain. Heavy [technology] users are likely to develop the left side of their brains, leaving the right side untapped or underdeveloped", Balance Brain Centre's Byun Gi-won said.

Source-Medindia

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Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Preventable Bloodstream Infections Among Patients may Provide Financial Boost to Hospitals

In a small, new study, reported online in the American Journal of Medical Quality, the researchers found that an ICU patient who develops an avoidable central line-associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) costs nearly three times more to care for than a similar infection-free patient. Moreover, hospitals earn nearly nine times more for treating infected patients, who spend an average of 24 days in the hospital.

The researchers also found that private insurers, rather than Medicare and Medicaid, pay the most for patient stays complicated by CLABSIs ? roughly $400,000 per hospital stay ? suggesting that private insurers would gain the most financial benefit from working with hospitals to reduce infection rates.

"We have known that hospitals often profit from complications, even ones of their own making," says Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D., senior vice president for patient safety for Johns Hopkins Medicine and one of the authors of the research. "What we did not know was by how much, and that private insurers are largely footing the bill."

"This study suggests that it is in the financial interest of private insurers to help hospitals find a way to improve patient safety and reduce the number of these preventable infections," says Johns Hopkins anesthesiology resident Eugene Hsu, M.D., M.B.A., the study's leader. "If the money spent on treating just one infection was spent on effectively implementing measures to prevent CLABSIs, insurers could save millions of dollars, and, more importantly, the needless suffering of patients would be reduced."

CLABSI infections occur when thin plastic tubes, or central lines, are placed in ICU patients to administer medication or fluids, obtain blood for tests, and directly gauge cardiovascular measurements such as central venous blood pressure. But the tubes are easily contaminated and each year roughly 80,000 patients with central lines become infected. Some 28,000 are estimated to die ? nearly as many as those who die from breast cancer annually ? and the cost of treating them may be as high as $3 billion nationally, according to experts.

While the number of infections has been falling nationwide as a result of checklists and other safety measures developed and tested by Pronovost, he says less money is currently available from the government to put interventions in place, and that a good source to turn to would be private insurers who have the most to gain financially from them.

The researchers reviewed records on patients admitted to an ICU at Queen's Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, from January 2009 through Jan. 1, 2012. Over that time, there were 16 CLABSIs. The researchers compared the data gathered from both the hospital and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Hawaii to determine costs, payments and profit margins for each infection. They then compared that information to data from a control group of 64 ICU patients who were not infected.

Results showed that the hospital's average profit margin for treating an infected patient was $54,906, while the margin for treating a similar uninfected patient was just $6,506, on average.

To their surprise, Hsu and his colleagues also found that private payers ? not government insurers Medicare and Medicaid ? pay the most to hospitals when an infection occurs. On average, they found that hospitals lost money in treating each infected patient when the government was paying ? an average of $14,000 per infection ? while they made $216,000 on average (before expenses) when private insurers were footing the bill.

Pronovost says this situation is driven largely by a policy that reimburses hospitals more for patients who are considered more complicated to treat. Insurers generally pay most hospitals a predetermined amount for a typical patient's stay, based on the average cost of providing care to a patient in a similar condition. The payment is set under a diagnostic related group (DRG) that pays a hospital a lump sum for a given patient's episode of care, a system which incentivizes hospitals to reduce costs of each stay since their revenues are fixed and they can keep any money that goes unspent. However, some cases are more complicated ? and therefore more costly to treat ? and insurers are required to pay more for these cases, using a mechanism known as outlier payments, in which hospitals are paid as a percentage of charges. The more the hospital charges, the more it is reimbursed by its insurer.

The majority of CLABSIs in the study were considered outliers and ensured a large payout, he adds. Private insurers pay more than government insurers for outliers, even when the triggering event was a preventable complication.

"The current payment system perversely penalizes hospitals with fewer infections," Hsu says. "What should happen instead is that hospitals should be financially rewarded for preventing harm rather than for treating the resulting illness."

Pronovost says that if private insurers took the money they spent on one preventable infection and invested it in quality improvement programs, they could see huge returns. "Given that the current policy of trying to improve quality though financial incentives has had limited impact, insurers should consider directly supporting these types of programs," he says.

Years ago, Johns Hopkins researchers, led by Pronovost, developed a much-heralded checklist and other interventions tested at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and then adopted by hospitals in entire states such as Michigan and Rhode Island, that virtually eliminated catheter infections.

"More than 1,200 hospitals have significantly reduced these infections through participating in our national program," he says. "At Johns Hopkins, we are continuously looking for more ways to decrease infections and other complications and minimize risks to patients."

The safety program developed at Johns Hopkins includes the much-talked-about, cockpit-style checklist for doctors and nurses to follow when placing a central line catheter, five basic steps from hand-washing to avoiding placement in the groin area where infection rates are higher. Along with the checklist, the program promotes a "culture of safety" that comprises science of safety education; training in how to identify safety problems and solutions and to measure improvements; and empowering all team members, no matter how senior or junior, to question each other and stop procedures if safety is compromised.

Source-Eurekalert

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Saturday, June 8, 2013

Doll Making Gains Popularity Among Tripura Women

by Bidita Debnath on? May 26, 2013 at 10:45 AM Lifestyle News In Tripura, women are finding different ways of becoming financially independent. And doll making is fast emerging as a preferred choice of profession among rural womenfolk. Doll Making Gains Popularity Among Tripura Women
Namita Mallick, a resident of Hapania village near Agartala, is a housewife. But, owing to her special skills in making dolls, she has now become a well-known entrepreneur in the state.

In 2005, Namita formed a self-help group and started making dolls, bags and other decorative items. Her work has inspired local women and over 10 women work for her. Many work from their homes as well.

"I thought instead of sitting at home I should do something. I was familiar with this work before my marriage. So, I started making dolls myself and then formed the SHG. We are able to earn quite well through this work," said Mallick.

Namita and her group are regular participants in fairs held across the country. Last year, the group exhibited their creativity at the annual India International Trade Fair in New Delhi.

Namita has till now trained more than 250 women at various skill development workshops so that they can work and earn in their leisure time.

"We formed a SHG in 2005, and one of our group members, Namita, taught us to make various things like dolls, garlands and many other items. After finishing my domestic chores, I work here," said Jotshna Adhikari, a member.

These women are able to make good money by selling hand-made items. Doll making has given new hope to women in the state who can now use their creativity to earn a livelihood.

Source-ANI

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WHO Concerned Over Potential Spread of SARS-Like Virus Among Humans

by Kathy Jones on? May 25, 2013 at 8:28 PM General Health News The World Health Organization deputy chief has voiced deep concern over the potential spread of SARS-like virus that has so far killed 22 people in less than a year. WHO Concerned Over Potential Spread of SARS-Like Virus Among Humans
"We have a high level of concern over the potential... for this virus to have sustainable person-to-person spread," WHO deputy chief Keiji Fukuda told diplomats gathered in Geneva for the World Health Assembly, the UN agency's decision-making body.

There has already been evidence of limited transmission between humans, and last week the WHO said two Saudi health workers had contracted the deadly coronavirus from patients -- the first evidence of transmission in a hospital setting.

But Fukuda said the WHO was looking into "whether this has the potential to have a more extensive spread, more extensive transmission."

Given the high fatality rate relative to the number of cases, experts have highlighted the power of the virus and the frightening prospect of its mutating into a form that leaps easily from human to human.

Fukuda's comments came after Saudi Arabia on Wednesday said another person had died from the virus. With a total death toll of 17, it has been the hardest hit by the disease that first emerged last June.

So far, there have been 44 lab-confirmed cases worldwide, half of them fatal, with 30 infections in Saudi Arabia and the rest spread across Jordan, Qatar, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, Britain and France.

Most of the patients infected in Europe and Tunisia had links to or had travelled in the Middle East.

The WHO said Thursday the virus, which until now has been known as the novel coronavirus, or nCoV-EMC, had been redubbed the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS CoV).

The virus is a cousin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), which triggered a scare 10 years ago when it erupted in east Asia, leaping to humans from animal hosts and eventually killing some 800 people.

Like SARS, the new virus appears to cause an infection deep in the lungs, with patients suffering from a temperature, cough and breathing difficulty, but it differs from SARS in that it also causes rapid kidney failure.

Source-AFP

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Sunday, June 2, 2013

Variation Seen Among Outpatient Practices in Control of Heart Disease Risk Factors

Researchers compared electronic health records of 115,737 patients in 18 primary care and cardiology practices participating in The Guideline Advantage?, a collaboration of the American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association and American Heart Association that aims to reduce risks for chronic diseases. They found: The percentage of people whose hypertension was under control (less than 140/90 mm Hg) ranged from 58.7 percent to 75.1 percent. The percentage of diabetic patients with cholesterol under control ("bad" low density lipoprotein cholesterol under 100 mg/dL) ranged from 53.8 percent to 100 percent. The percentage of patients screened for smoking, and receiving a tobacco cessation intervention, ranged from 53.8 percent to 86.1 percent.

"Previously, we've focused on improving the quality of inpatient hospital care and haven't explored enough how to improve outpatient care," said Zubin Eapen, M.D., the study's lead author and an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University in Durham, N.C. "This baseline snapshot lets us see just how much progress could be made in preventing or managing diseases."

"It's eye-opening for practices to see how much better or worse they're doing than their peers on nationally derived measures of quality. They can learn to improve in collaboration with others instead of alone," he said.

Source-Eurekalert

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Thursday, May 30, 2013

Risk of Problem Drinking High Among Youth Who Have Their First Drink During Puberty

Research shows that the earlier the age at which youth take their first alcoholic drink, the greater the risk of developing alcohol problems. Thus, age at first drink (AFD) is generally considered a powerful predictor of progression to alcohol-related harm. A new study shows that individuals who have their first drink during puberty subsequently have higher drinking levels than do individuals with a post-pubertal drinking onset.

Results will be published in the October 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"Most teenagers have their first alcoholic drink during puberty, however, most research on the risks of early-onset alcohol use up to now has not focused on the pubertal stage during which the first alcoholic drink is consumed," said Miriam Schneider, leader of the Research Group Developmental Neuropsychopharmacology at the Central Institute of Mental Health, University of Heidelberg, as well as corresponding author for the study. "Common thinking in alcohol research was that the earlier adolescents begin, the more deleterious become their drinking habits. However, a closer look at the statistics revealed a peak risk of alcohol use disorders for those beginning at 12 to 14 years of age, while even earlier beginners seemed to have a slightly lower risk. Since timing of puberty is not a simple function of chronological age, and also greatly differs between the sexes, the pubertal phase at first drink may therefore represent a stronger and better indicator for subsequent alcohol-related problems than simply the age."

"Usually this type of research has to be done retrospectively, and those studies are not very reliable," added Rainer Spanagel, head of the Institute of Psychopharmacology at the University of Heidelberg. "Prospective longitudinal studies like the one here ? are able to provide reliable conclusions on such a clinically and highly relevant research question. Alternatively, animal studies can be very informative - and which the researchers have also provided."

"Adolescents have their first drink at very different ages," explained Schneider. "It would be unethical to make adolescents have their first drink in the course of a study, so this variable requires a longitudinal epidemiological study or experimental animal research to assess drinking behavior. Also, the determination of the pubertal stage at AFD is not trivial; even our study had to rely on estimations. Third, it takes longitudinal studies to assess drinking data in early adulthood. Fourth, both drinking behavior and pubertal development can be traced back to common factors such as psychosocial adversity. Finally, while puberty and adolescence are overlapping time periods, with puberty being a part of adolescence, the terms cannot be used interchangeably. 'Puberty' refers to the time period during which sexual maturity is achieved. 'Adolescence' refers to the gradual period of behavioral and cognitive transition from childhood to adulthood, where adult behavioral abilities are acquired, and the boundaries of this period are not precisely defined. Girls complete puberty much earlier than boys, indicating a difference in timing of neurodevelopmental processes."

Schneider and her colleagues determined pubertal age at first drink in 283 young adults (152 females, 131 males) that were part of a larger epidemiological study. In addition, the participants' drinking behavior - number of drinking days, amount of alcohol consumed, and hazardous drinking - was assessed at ages 19, 22, and 23 years via interviews and questionnaires. Furthermore, a rodent study concurrently examined the effects of mid-puberty or adult alcohol exposure on voluntary alcohol consumption in later life by 20 male Wistar rats.

"Both studies revealed that those individuals that initiated alcohol consumption during puberty tended to drink more and also more frequently than those starting after puberty," said Schneider.

"In other words," said Spanagel, "this study indicates that the period of puberty might serve as a risk window for AFD. Results also show a higher Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) score later in life in those individuals who had their AFD in puberty. A higher AUDIT score is indicative of a high likelihood of hazardous or harmful alcohol consumption. This information is of great relevance for intervention programs. Even more interesting, neither pre-pubertal nor post-pubertal periods seem to serve as risk-time windows. Therefore, intervention programs should be directed selectively towards young people in puberty."

Both Schneider and Spanagel noted the influence of a high degree of brain development that occurs during puberty.

"Numerous neurodevelopmental alterations are taking place during puberty, such as maturational processes in cortical and limbic regions, which are characterized by both progressive and regressive changes such as myelination and synaptic pruning," said Schneider. "Typically, an overproduction of axons and synapses can be found during early puberty, followed by rapid pruning during later puberty, indicating that connections and communication between subcortical and cortical regions are in a highly transitional state during this period."

"Puberty is a phase in which the brain reward system undergoes major functional changes," said Spanagel. "For example, the endocannabinoid and dopamine systems are at their peak and these major neurobiological changes are reflected on the behavioral level; reward sensitivity is highest during puberty. Therefore, during puberty the brain is in a highly vulnerable state for any kind of reward, and drug rewards in particular. This high vulnerability might also affect reward seeking, or in this particular case, alcohol seeking and drinking behavior later in life."

"In summary," said Schneider, "puberty is a very critical developmental period due to ongoing neurodevelopmental processes in the brain. It is exactly during puberty that substances like drugs of abuse - alcohol, cannabis, etc. - may induce the most destructive and also persistent effects on the still developing brain, which may in some cases even result in neuropsychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia or addictive disorders. Prevention work therefore needs to increase awareness of specific risks and vulnerability related to puberty."

Source-Eurekalert

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DM

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