Category: Health and Medicine

An international team of scientists have discovered that the brain’s right parietal lobe is responsible for the disorder, dyscalculia, a kind of numerical dyslexia. The discovery made by researchers at University College London, University of the Negev, Israel, Birkbeck Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, London, Maastricht University, Netherlands, and the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany, could ultimately lead to new methods of diagnosis and management of the disorder through remedial teaching.

Dyscalculia is as common as dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) with about one in twenty people affected. However, dyscalculia has been given little regard in the mainstream despite its potentially debilitating impact on quality of life. Roi Cohen Kadosh, of UCL’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience explains the implications of his study, which involved inducing dyscalculia: “This is the first causal demonstration that the parietal lobe is the key to understanding developmental dyscalculia,” he explains, “Most people process numbers very easily — almost automatically — but people with dyscalculia do not.” The team stimulated for a few milliseconds the right parietal lobes of volunteers carrying out an arithmetic test, using neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) . The stimulation essentially knocked out activity in that part of the brain and left the volunteers unable to react as quickly to the test.

“This provides strong evidence that dyscalculia is caused by malformations in the right parietal lobe and provides sold grounds for further study on the physical abnormalities present in dyscalculics’ brains,” adds Cohen Kadosh, “It’s an important step to the ultimate goal of early diagnosis through analysis of neural tissue, which in turn will lead to earlier treatments and more effective remedial teaching.”

The researchers will publish details of their findings in the April 17 issue of the journal Current Biology

Both the UK and US national diabetes organizations have a risk test available for anyone worried about diabetes risk. Read the rest of this post and then take the tests and let me know how you get on.

You can take the Diabetes UK MeasureUp two-minute test here and/or the US diabetes risk test, although I recommend the more comprehensive (but more complicated) Diabetes UK test.

The US test is very, very simplistic, it asks you to plump for a very broad age range, asks if you have siblings or parents with diabetes, gets your height and weight, and whether you excercise or not. There is no detail in the questions at all, but then the results are very simplistic too. I truthfully filled in the blanks and scored a big fat zero. Null points. Thankfully, that means very low risk. But, I think the lack of questioning about supine waist measurement, body fat percentage and actual details about exercise, blood pressure etc, mean one would have to take this result with a large pinch of salt (actually, hold the salt, throw some sand instead, it is healthier).

I realize this is more about awareness and the tests are deliberately simplistic so that someone with a family history who does not exercise and is overweight might hopefully visit their doctor for a check up when the test shows them to be high risk.

There are over 20 million people in the US with diabetes, says the ADO, and almost a third of those (more than 6 million people) do not know it. These people need to get equipment and help for their disease like a glucometer by Dexcom.”

In contrast, the UK test is much more comprehensive and so presumably provides a better reflection of risk, it asks for waist measurement as well as ethnicity, and whether you have any cardiovascular disorders in some detail. It also asks about mental health and known metabolic disorders, as well as factors such as mental health problems. With all this additional information I still came out low risk, so I’m happy. What about you? I’d be interested to read comments from Sciencebase visitors who try either or both tests. Remember though, that if you are worried about diabetes or show any symptoms of the disease get to your GP fast.

Further information on diabetes is available from American Diabetes Association and Diabetes UK

“The US Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) position on medical cannabis is incorrect, dishonest and a flagrant violation of laws requiring the government to base policy on sound science,” claims Joe Elford, Chief Counsel for patient advocacy group. The organisation, the largest of its type in the US promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research, has filed a lawsuit demanding that the federal government “cease issuing misinformation on medical cannabis and correct the information it has released.”

There is growing evidence that the active ingredient in cannabis (THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol) can alleviate the often debilitating pain suffered by those afflicted with multiple sclerosis (MS) and HIV/AIDS. However, given the drug’s illicit status in most countries many governments have not acceded to its free use as a therapeutic agent nor encouraged systematic research and clinical trials to demonstrate efficacy or otherwise. Moreover, the ASA suggests that the US government is stifling valid research and spreading disinformation about the benefits.

The pharmacological action of THC results from the compound binding to the so-called cannabinoid receptor CB1, in the brain. The presence of this specialized receptor suggests that there are natural THC-like (cannabinoid) compounds made or used in the body. THC has been repeatedly demonstrated to have analgesic effects but the “high” associated with its use have precluded it from mainstream medical research. Several research teams are, however, investigating variations on the THC theme that retain the analgesic properties but do not produce a high. Such a product would be more acceptable to the pharmaceutical industry and the regulatory authorities, but requires a lot of work with the native compound to help scientists work out what chemical factor leads to the high and which part produces just the analgesic effect.

Fellow blogger “Joe” discusses many of the issues in more detail. He points out that since the 1980s the FDA has actually approved Marinol, a synthetic THC analogue for pain in cancer. But, the conflicting response of successive Bush adminstrations (viz the first Bush administration, in the early 1990s cancelled a compassionate use program and in the late 1990s, the Office of National Drug Control Policy threatened action against physicians who recommend or prescribe marijuana. California doctors and patients subsequently sued the federal government.

Opponents of medical marijuana use cite apocryphal evidence that it is a gateway drug to harder substances. However, one must consider the plight of terminally ill patients who seek relief from intolerable pain and suffering. Ironically, many terminally ill patients do indeed end up using much harder drugs in the end. Diamorphine? Heroin by another name.