Attention Deficit Disorder Is Growing Problem in Adults

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Between 1% and 4% of children are believed to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Hyperactivity decreases as the brain matures. But the inability to concentrate can persist into adulthood.

In the U.S., in addition to 2.5 million children receiving medication for ADD, there are 1.5 million adults being treated. In September, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is due to bring out long-awaited guidelines on treating ADD in adults; as a result, both medication and psychological treatments will probably be made available.

To some, that is a horrifying prospect — fuelling anxieties that drug companies could be recruiting customers to take unnecessary medication.

And there still remains skepticism about the very existence of the disorder. It has been argued that fidgeting, staring dreamily out of windows, failing to pay attention, chatting constantly, rushing around, forgetting instructions, and being perpetually late are part of normal behavior.

However, Dr. Marios Adamou, who has been piloting treatment for adults with ADD at St. Martin’s Hospital in Canterbury, England, says it is a real, and highly heritable, condition: “Brain scans show that an area of the prefrontal cortex – the cingulate cortex – is significantly smaller in sufferers. This is the area that controls planning and processing emotions.'”

The ADD debate has been dominated by the controversy over the use of methylphenidate stimulants, prescribed under brand names including Ritalin and Concerta – to help with focus.

Professor Phil Asherson of the Institute of Psychiatry in London, who has been pioneering the treatment of adults, said, “Few adults get treatment and more should,” he says. “ADD persists in severe form in 15% of those who had it as children; in 65%, it persists to some degree. No psychiatric medicine is free of problems, but with those used to treat ADD, the problems are relatively minor.”

Cancer Patient Makes Full Recovery After Injection of Cells

A cancer patient has made a full recovery after being injected with billions of his own immune cells in the first case of its kind, doctors in Seattle disclosed Thursday.

The 52-year-old, who was suffering from advanced skin cancer, was free from tumors within eight weeks of undergoing the procedure.

After two years he is still clear of the disease, which had spread to his lymph nodes and to one of his lungs.

Doctors took cells from the man’s own defense system that were found to attack the cancer cells best, cloned them, and injected back into his body, in a process known as cell transfer immunotherapy or T-cell treatment. Experts said that the case could mark a major breakthrough in the treatment of cancer.

Vegan, Low-Fat Diet Could Help Fight Cancer

A vegan low-fat diet combined with yoga and exercise can help fight prostate cancer, a study suggests this week.

Researchers found that combining a diet low in fat and rich in fruit and vegetables with regular moderate exercise seemed to switch on genes that fight disease, while effectively turning off others that can promote cancer.

The results come from a study of men with early-stage prostate cancer, but experts believe they could also be of relevance to a wide range of cancers, including breast cancer. Inspired by studies that show prostate cancer is rarer in parts of the world where people eat a low-fat diet with plenty of fruit and vegetables, the founder and

president of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute, Dr. Dean Ornish, devised a vegan diet and exercise regime for patients to follow.

The result was a “striking” effect on the way genes are used in the body, Dr. Ornish, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, reports.

A previous control study on 93 men with early-stage prostate

cancer showed that making intensive changes in diet and lifestyle could stop or perhaps even reverse the progression of their illness.

The new study, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, shows for the first time that men with low-risk prostate cancer who made improvements in fitness, stress management, and nutrition altered the use of genes that have a role in tumor progression.

The team monitored the activity of genes in biopsies taken from 30 men who were diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer and who had decided not to undergo conventional treatment. Three months after participants had made the required lifestyle changes, researchers found more than 500 genes had shown signs of beneficial effects.

About 50 disease-preventing genes were “turned on” and certain genes that promote diseases, including some involved in prostate cancer and breast cancer, were “turned off.”


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