Synthetic marijuana dangerous for kidneys

Feb. 8, 2013 ? University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) nephrologists have reported for the first time in medical literature cases of acute kidney injury directly linked with synthetic marijuana use. The case studies are reported online in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology and will appear in the March 2013 print edition of the journal.

The authors report that nephrotoxicity -- the poisonous effect of a substance on the kidneys -- from designer drugs such as SPICE or K2, which mimic the effects of marijuana but are human-made and cannot be detected in routine drug tests, should be considered when a patient presents with acute kidney injury and no other evident cause. This is especially true for young adults with negative urine drug screens, said the paper's senior author Denyse Thornley-Brown, M.D., associate professor in the UAB Division of Nephrology.

Thornley-Brown said the use of relatively cheap synthetic marijuana preparations has increased significantly over the past few years, mostly among young adults who have a desire to experiment with a substance that is difficult to detect. The relatively low cost, about $20 per gram, is another reason for its popularity.

In the journal, Thornley-Brown and colleagues outlined four different cases of previously healthy young men whose acute kidney injury was linked to ingestion of synthetic marijuana. All the patients were residents of the same northeastern Alabama community and presented to UAB or a community hospital within a nine-week period showing symptoms of nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain after using synthetic marijuana.

"Cases of acute coronary syndrome associated with synthetic marijuana use have been reported, but our publication is the first to associate use with acute kidney injury," said study co-author Gaurav Jain, M.D., assistant professor in the Division of Nephrology. "Tachycardia and seizures have also been reported with synthetic cannabinoids."

Three of the patients had acute kidney injury marked by the excretion of an abnormally small volume of urine, known asoliguric acute kidney injury, and the fourth had a decrease in effective blood flow to the kidney, known as prerenal acute kidney injury. Three of the patients underwent a kidney biopsy that showed acute tubular necrosis, which is the death of cells that form the minute canals in the kidney that secrete, reabsorb, collect and transport urine. Left untreated, this can cause the kidneys to shut down. In these four cases, the patients recovered kidney function, and none required dialysis.

Thornley-Brown said the patients' common history of synthetic marijuana ingestion suggests a possible pathogenic role of its preparation in these patients' acute kidney injury. The time of occurrence and geographic clustering of the cases is consistent with a common toxic exposure. However, due to the small number of patients, the inability to obtain a sample of the synthetic marijuana involved and the patients' serum and urine samples being discarded by the time of the investigation, the researchers found it difficult to argue for a causative role of the preparations in acute kidney injury.

But, Jain added, given that synthetic marijuana preparations involve using several additives, the causative agent of the acute kidney injury in these cases may have been an additive rather than the cannabinoid itself.

"There is very little information regarding the ingredients in synthetic cannabinoids that are sold on the streets, although it is known that additional compounds are added to the preparations," Jain added. "It is very likely that a possible nephrotoxin adulterated the preparation used by our patients."

The authors recommend that physicians inquire about the use of designer drugs when evaluating patients with acute kidney injury -- especially in cases where the etiology is unknown and the urine drug screen is negative. For young people, the take-home message should be that these drugs may have unanticipated and potentially life threatening side effects,and they should be avoided.

"If they don't get to a physician in time, the damage to their kidneys could be permanent, and they could end up on dialysis," Jain added.

Gautam Kantilal Bhanushali, Huma Fatima and Leah J. Leisch, all from UAB, were co-authors on the study.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Alabama at Birmingham. The original article was written by Jennifer Lollar.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. G. K. Bhanushali, G. Jain, H. Fatima, L. J. Leisch, D. Thornley-Brown. AKI Associated with Synthetic Cannabinoids: A Case Series. Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, 2012; DOI: 10.2215/CJN.05690612

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/7qWcS0Sv-iI/130208124553.htm

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Equal marriage means gay relationships will stop being dismissed ...

From Pink News UK:? http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/02/06/comment-equal-marriage-means-gay-relationships-will-stop-being-dismissed-as-inferior/

by Charlotte Henry
6?February?2013

Writing for PinkNews.co.uk, political commentator Charlotte Henry analyses the significance of this week?s historic Commons vote on equal marriage.

It?s fairly clear what the consequences for our community will be if, as expected, equal marriage comes to pass. More than being about a wedding, genuine same-sex marriage will mean gay relationships will stop being dismissed as inferior.

Ultimately though this change required politics to make it happen, and many of the consequences will be political too.

For Nick Clegg the situation is, for once, simple. He and Lynne Featherstone will rightly be seen as the driving forces behind this legislation, and receive credit from many for this.

Ed Miliband is also supportive of the legislation, and many of his party followed his lead yesterday. While the Lib Dems may have been the government driving force behind the legislation, it was Labour votes that helped it over the line.

Which brings us on to David Cameron.?The prime minister deserves huge credit for taking on his grassroots and declaring his support at party conference, as well as determinedly making equal marriage part of the coalition?s agenda.

Cameron clearly saw equal marriage as a key part of his modernising agenda, and has the support of a Chancellor who by all accounts is quite liberal on social matters like this.

However, many Tory backbenchers and activists do not share their opinion, and are letting it be known in no uncertain terms.

Continue reading at:? http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2013/02/06/comment-equal-marriage-means-gay-relationships-will-stop-being-dismissed-as-inferior/

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Source: http://womenborntranssexual.com/2013/02/07/equal-marriage-means-gay-relationships-will-stop-being-dismissed-as-inferior/

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It's 'common sense' ? or is it? The politics of Obama's new favorite phrase.

Politicians from the president to the tea party use the rhetoric of 'common sense' to support their thinking on key issues. But is the phrase really telling us anything at all?

By Linda Feldmann,?Staff writer / February 4, 2013

President Obama gestures as he speaks about his gun violence proposals, Monday, at the Minneapolis Police Department's Special Operations Center in Minneapolis, where he outlined his plan before law enforcement personnel.

Jim Mone/AP

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In these early days of his second term, President Obama isn?t just promoting legislation on guns and immigration. The president and his surrogates are promoting ?common-sense proposals? to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and a revamped, ?common-sense? immigration system.

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Indeed, it is rare in recent Obama administration pronouncements that the terms??gun measures??and ?immigration reform? appear without the words ?common sense? nearby.

At a campaign-style event on gun violence in Minneapolis on Monday, for instance, Mr. Obama used the phrase five times in a 15-minute speech.

?I need everybody who's listening to keep the pressure on your member of Congress to do the right thing,? Obama said at the Minneapolis Police Department Special Operations Center. ?Ask them if they support common-sense reforms like requiring universal background checks or restoring the ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.?

The use of ?common sense? to woo the public is as old as the nation. In 1776, activist Thomas Paine wrote the best-selling pamphlet ?Common Sense? to promote the idea of colonial independence from Britain ? and the term has been deployed regularly for political use ever since.

?It has been a hallmark of populism on both the right and left,? says Sophia Rosenfeld, a historian at the University of Virginia and author of ?Common Sense: A Political History.? ?It was used to argue for abolition and also for slavery, for women?s suffrage and against women?s suffrage.?

In the modern era, one way for an interest group to project a hint of populism is to put ?common sense? in its name ? such as Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group that tracks federal spending (and named Alaska?s infamous ?Bridge to Nowhere?).??Some tea party groups, like Alabama's Common Sense Tea Party Patriots, have also incorporated the phrase into their titles.?

Other Republicans have been prone to recent pleas for ?common sense? as well. During the 2012 presidential campaign, GOP nominee Mitt Romney called for repeal of the Affordable Care Act and replacement with ?common-sense, patient centered reforms.? In 2009, the House Republicans? answer to Obamacare was a bill called the?Common Sense Health Care Reform and Affordability Act. ?

So what does this ?common sense? rhetorical flourish really convey? And does it work?

It?s a way of asserting that an issue has been decided ? when in fact, just the opposite is the case ? and of depicting opponents as unreasonable ideologues, say experts on language and political rhetoric.

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/GpjJ9EuMm4s/It-s-common-sense-or-is-it-The-politics-of-Obama-s-new-favorite-phrase

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Turning grief into a profitable disease ? Beyond Meds

By Paul Woodward

first published on?War in Context

?Pleasure puts you to sleep and pain wakes you up,? an Indian sage?once said, yet in the United States we live in a culture that prizes painlessness far more than wakefulness. Indeed, we are increasingly being encouraged to pathologize pain at moments when we would otherwise be called to wrestle with life?s meaning.

The latest edition of the DSM, the?Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?(due for publication in May) which is the bible of psychiatry, regards grief as a disease.

Following the death of a loved one, depression occurring within a few weeks can be treated as an illness in need of a pharmaceutical cure. The pain of loss?can?and supposedly?should?be chemically dissolved.

All too predictably, the support that was once provided by other people is coming instead to be provided by pills.

Instead of recognizing grief as an appropriate response to death and the profoundly difficult transitions that come in its wake, a human experience is being turned into a neurotransmitter imbalance and in the process a huge business opportunity is being opened up for companies like GlaxoSmithKline.

Late last year, the business section of the?Washington Post?reported:

For years, the official handbook of psychiatry, issued by the American Psychiatric Association, advised against diagnosing major depression when the distress is ?better accounted for by bereavement.? Such grief, experts said, was better left to nature.

But that may be changing.

In what some prominent critics have called a bonanza for the drug companies, the American Psychiatric Association this month voted to drop the old warning against diagnosing depression in the bereaved, opening the way for more of them to be diagnosed with major depression ? and thus, treated with antidepressants.

The change in the handbook, which could have significant financial implications for the $10 billion U.S. antidepressant market, was developed in large part by people affiliated with the pharmaceutical industry, an examination of financial disclosures shows.

The association itself depends in part on industry funding, and the majority of experts on the committee that drafted the new diagnostic guideline have either received research grants from the drug companies, held stock in them, or served them as speakers or consultants.

Arthur Kleinman, professor of medical anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry at Harvard University, writes:

In March, 2011, my wife died and I experienced the physiology of grief. I felt greatly sad and yearned for her. I didn?t sleep well. When I returned to a now empty house, I became agitated. I also felt fatigued and had difficulty concentrating on my academic work. My weight declined owing to a newly indifferent appetite. This dark experience lightened over the months, so that the feelings became much less acute by around 6 months. But after 46 years of marriage, it will come as no surprise to most people that as I approach the first anniversary of my loss, I still feel sadness at times and harbour the sense that a part of me is gone forever. I?m not even sure my caregiving for my wife, who died of Alzheimer?s disease, ended with her death. I am still caring for our memories. Is there anything wrong (or pathological) with that?

Experience, including the experience of loss, is never neat: that is, out of context. It is always framed by meanings and values, which themselves are affected by all sorts of things like one?s age, health, financial and work conditions, and what is happening in one?s life and in the wider world. The collective and personal process we usually refer to as culture is one sort of framing: a kind of master framing. Historically, widows in many patriarchal societies were culturally framed as grieving for a lifetime or at least, a long time. The globalisation of our era has brought in its wake an expectation of serial marriages with much shorter periods of bereavement. Still, DSM-IV?s framing of normal grief as lasting only 2 months must stand out in global perspective as a shocking expectation. We can say the same about the APA?s [American Psychiatric Association] proposal for treating any grief as depressive disorder, which must be seen as a radical cultural framing peculiar to American academic psychiatric research.

Inasmuch as there is no compelling evidence that antidepressant drugs improve mood in normal people, the APA, if it wanted to authorise treatment for normal grief, had to make it over into a disease ? ie, depression. Then psychiatrists could, as a routine practice, prescribe antidepressants for bereavement. This phenomenon of reframing a previously normal experience as a disease is called medicalisation and is quite far advanced in psychiatric practice, which already labels shyness as anxiety disorder and puts some people who are unskilled in negotiating social relationships in the Asperger?s syndrome end of the autism spectrum. These framings represent a cultural shift, now well along its way, to remake experiences formerly regarded as morally bad, religiously sinful, disturbing, or just different as medical issues of illness and disablement. The upshot is that unprecedented numbers of people with what was earlier regarded as the ordinary distress of living are taking psychotropic medication.

The increasing secularisation of our age with the dominance of biotechnology is one factor behind this shift to a new cultural frame, just as much as the political economy of the pharmaceutical industry, the transformation of American medicine into big business, and the infiltration of bureaucratic standards and regulations ever more deeply into ordinary life. All of which brings me back to the experience of grieving. Why not medicalise it? Why not deprive death of its sting for the survivors and make the experience of loss as painless as possible? Given the parlous state of global capitalism at the moment, maybe this would also help to fund health-care systems. Professor David J Kupfer, who chairs the DSM-5 Task Force making the revisions, is reported to have told?The New York Times?that making grief into a disease would allow psychiatrists to treat people who were suffering so that they would get the treatment they need for being depressed. And that?s the rub really. Is grief something that we can or should no longer tolerate? Is this existential source of suffering like any dental or back pain unwanted and unneeded?

My own experience, together with my reading of the literature, suggests caution is needed before we answer yes and turn ordinary grieving into a suitable target of therapeutic intervention. My grief, like that of millions of others, signalled the loss of something truly vital in my life. This pain was part of the remembering and maybe also the remaking. It punctuated the end of a time and a form of living, and marked the transition to a new time and a different way of living. The suffering pushed me out of my ordinary day-to-day existence and called into question the meanings and values that animated our life. The cultural reframing ? at once subjective and shared with others in my life-world?held moral and religious significance. What would it mean to reframe that significance as medical? For me and my family, and I intuit for many, many others such a cultural reframing would seem inappropriate or even a technological interference with what matters most in our lives.

Before his wife?s death, Kleinman gave the following interview in which he talks about his experience of caregiving:

Watch?Arthur Kleinman Extended Interview?on PBS. See more from?Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.

first published on?War in Context

More posts by?Paul Woodward on Beyond Meds

Source: http://beyondmeds.com/2013/02/06/turning-grief-into-a-profitable-disease/

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Neanderthals died out earlier than thought

Neanderthals may have died out earlier than before thought, researchers say.

These findings hint that Neanderthals did not coexist with modern humans as long as previously suggested, investigators added.

Modern humans once shared the planet with now-departed human lineages, including the Neanderthals, our closest known extinct relatives. However, there has been heated debate over just how much time and interaction, or interbreeding, Neanderthals had with modern humans.

To help solve the mystery, an international team of researchers investigated 215 bones previously excavated from 11 sites in southern Iberia, in an area known as Spain today. Neanderthals entered Europe before modern humans did, and prior research had suggested the last of the Neanderthals held out in southern Iberia until about 35,000 years ago, potentially sharing the region with modern humans for thousands of years.

Their data suggest that modern humans and Neanderthals may have actually lived in the area at completely different times, never crossing paths there at all. Even so, these findings do not call into question whether modern humans and Neanderthals once had sex ? the findings simply indicate this interbreeding must have occurred earlier, before modern humans entered Europe.

"The genetic evidence for interbreeding ? 1 to 4 percent Neanderthal DNA in present-day modern humans ? suggests that interbreeding probably occurred before the period we are looking at in the Levant, the region around Israel and Syria, when modern humans first migrated out of Africa," researcher Rachel Wood, an archaeologist and radiocarbon specialist at Australian National University in Canberra, told LiveScience.

Dating bones
Scientists discover the ages of artifacts and fossils using a variety of techniques. For instance, radiocarbon dating determines the age of biological remains based on the ratio between the carbon isotopes (atoms of the same element with different numbers of neutrons) carbon-12 and carbon-14 it holds ? this proportion changes as radioactive carbon-14 breaks down while stable carbon-12 does not. Researchers can also look at the layers of soil and rock in which objects are found ? if these layers were not disturbed over the years, then objects in the same layer should be the same age.

The investigators concentrated on collagen, the part of bone most suited for radiocarbon dating. Only eight of these bones from two sites in Spain ? Zafarraya Cave and Jarama VI ? had enough collagen for analysis. [ Image Gallery: Our Closest Human Ancestor ]

One bone, which came from a wild goat, was found in Zafarraya Cave in a similar layer as Neanderthal fossils. The bone was previously estimated as 33,300 years in age. However, using an ultrafiltration technique that cleansed the bone of modern carbon impurities that can give inaccurate younger dates, they found the bone was more than 46,700 years old.

"Our work suggests that at present, it is unlikely that Neanderthals survived any later in this area than they did elsewhere in mainland Europe," said researcher Thomas Higham at the University of Oxford in England.

The most surprising thing "was the enormous difference that the ultrafiltration dating made to the chronologies of the sites we looked at," Wood said. "At other sites in Europe, we have seen that this improved method of dating bone makes a difference, making old bones older. However, we do not normally see such consistently large differences. This is probably because the preservation of the organic materials ? bone and charcoal ? that are normally radiocarbon dated is really poor in warm climates like southern Spain."

Analysis of the remaining samples revealed they were at least 10,000 years older than previously estimated. Instead, they were close to or more than 50,000 years old, the upper limit for radiocarbon dating.

1. Science news from NBCNews.com

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When Neanderthals died out
"Our results cast doubt on a hypothesis that has been broadly accepted since the early 1990s ? that the last place for surviving Neanderthals was in the southern Iberian Peninsula," Wood said. "Much of the evidence that has supported this idea is based on a series of radiocarbon dates, which cluster at around 35,000 years ago. Our results call all of these results into question."

These findings suggest modern humans and Neanderthals might not have interacted in this area. In northern Iberia, about 150 miles (250 kilometers) north of Jarama VI, past research suggested modern humans were only present starting about 42,000 years ago. These new findings hint that modern humans and Neanderthals did not coexist for millennia as before thought, and did not live side-by-side. [ 10 Mysteries of the First Humans ]

"The results of our study suggest that there are major problems with the dating of the last Neanderthals in modern-day Spain," Higham said. "We now have to look very cautiously at the model of late Neanderthal survival in southern Iberia and focus our efforts on more rigorous dating programs."

One site, Cueva Ant?n in Spain, did seem as young as previously thought. However, it remains uncertain whether the artifacts there are linked with Neanderthals ? they may belong to modern humans.

The researchers caution they are not definitely saying that there were no Neanderthals in southern Iberia after 42,000 years ago. "What we have is a gap where we have no reliable radiocarbon dates. There might have been Neanderthals or modern humans or both or neither," Wood said. Also, "there are several circumstances which could have obscured later interbreeding events in Europe, so it is not possible to say, for example, that at one time there was not more Neanderthal DNA in Europeans."

The scientists detailed their findings online Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook ? and ? Google+.

? 2012 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50697389/ns/technology_and_science-science/

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Why We Repeatedly Choose The Wrong Relationships [EXPERT ...

How do you get out of the cycle of bad relationships?

Do you pick the same type of terrible partner over and over again?

It seems so simple ? two people are attracted to each other, and they either get along and the relationship grows or not, and so they break up and move on. But how often do relationships actually work this way?

More from YourTango: How To Have A Grown-Up Valentines Day [EXPERT]

On one hand, there are couples who have been unhappily married for 30-plus years, and on the other hand, everyone knows friends who break up with partners every two months, only to date the next, eerily similar candidate. So, why do people pick lovers that break their hearts?

The devil you know. People tend to be drawn to the familiar. Whether it's a former boyfriend, your mom, dad, or brother ? regardless of how crazy they may have been ? basically, you've become an expert in managing life alongside them. It was tough, but you learned how to handle (or elegantly avoid) them.

Craziness no longer scares you. Maybe you've played a key role in maintaining sanity in your family, and if so, you may take pride in that. You've survived and mastered that challenge, and now it is familiar, even comfortable to you. So when you meet that type of person, you're naturally drawn towards him/her.

The dysfunctional duo. Sometimes the reason you're with somebody is not for all the rational reasons you think, but instead because that person meets a subconscious need in you. The problem is that it can create a bad dynamic. If you're struggling with depression or boredom, a "drama queen" (or king) makes you feel alive, but also turns your life into a roller coaster. If you're a wallflower, a charming narcissist might help your social status, but he's hell to live with.

More from YourTango: 4 Questions To Ask Yourself Before Filing For Divorce [EXPERT]

These are some of the reasons people get into these bad relationships, but the next question is: Why do we stay in bad relationships? Let's look at some reasons. Keep reading...

More breakup advice from YourTango:

Want more advice? Find an expert near you!

Source: http://www.yourtango.com/experts/julia-flood/why-we-repeatedly-choose-wrong-relationships-expert

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