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Over the weekend Erin Brockovich made the news yet again as she and her nonprofit team descended on the village of Le Roy, N.Y., determined to test for environmental toxins that might be giving the town's teenagers symptoms of Tourette's syndrome. She has reportedly been stonewalled thus far by local officials, who have already ruled out toxins as the cause of last October's sudden outbreak of tics and involuntary movements in 12 girls who attend Le Roy Junior–Senior High School. An environmental testing company surveyed the air and water and found nothing amiss, and a local neurologist concluded upon examining the girls that they had "conversion disorder," a catchall moniker for physical symptoms that originate in the mind because of stress, trauma or even mass...

Experts say conversion disorder explains the symptoms experienced by a cluster of girls at a New York school, but environmentalists question chemical spill. Medscape Medical News (Source: Medscape Today Headlines)

CONCLUSION: This is the first study to provide the prevalence of chronic tics in elementary school students in Iran. ADHD is more common among students with chronic tics and Tourette's syndrome. PMID: 22292574 [PubMed - in process] (Source: Archives of Iranian Medicine)

Conclusions  We can use available information from clinical and animal models to make more precise hypotheses regarding the particular pathophysiology driving SIB. The results of testing such hypotheses should generate pharmacological strategies that may prove efficacious in reducing SIB. (Source: Journal of Intellectual Disability Research)

Conclusions:Echopraxia is a hallmark of Tourette syndrome. © 2012 Movement Disorder Society (Source: Movement Disorders)

Stress likely caused a dozen female high school students to suddenly experience tics and other neurological symptoms associated with Tourette Syndrome. Reuters Health Information (Source: Medscape Medical News Headlines)

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Labels abound, some of them distasteful, some inaccurate, some just in vogue, others useful to understanding and planning. I am speaking about children who have substantial special needs. They may be diagnosed with complex disorders such as Autism, Asperger’s, Pervasive Developmental Disorders, Bipolar Disorder, Tourette’s, or Mental Retardation. All are challenging to identify reliably, and even more challenging to treat effectively. We can add the physical disabilities of blindness, deafness, and a multitude of serious medical disorders that strike children and significantly limit their ability to function. Each of these disorders has books, websites, and national organizations devoted to them. Parents often know more about the specific disorder than any individual professional ...

12 teenagers at LeRoy Junior-Senior High School in upstate N.Y. experience Tourette's like symptoms around the same time (Source: Health News: CBSNews.com)

Doctors think they finally have a diagnosis for 12 girls at the a New York State high school who have all been suffering from the same Tourette's-like symptoms. (Source: CTV Health)

We present a patient with Tourette syndrome wh... (Source: SafetyLit: All (Unduplicated))

Jayne Bargent, 55, from Hampshire, said she has been effectively cured of the uncontrollable and violent tics that left her unable to read, cook or walk in a straight line. (Source: the Mail online | Health)

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LONDON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- A British Tourette's syndrome sufferer has had her symptoms "switched off" in a revolutionary procedure involving brain implants, doctors said. (Source: Health News - UPI.com)

CONCLUSIONS: This is the first large-scale survey on prescribing habits for the pharmacological management of Tourette syndrome in Europe. In general, dopamine blockers were widely used for tics, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors for depression, obsessive-compulsive symptoms and anxiety, and stimulants for attention-deficit hyperactivity symptoms, but there was high variation within these choices. Future studies need to target specific patient groups. PMID: 22178398 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: European Journal of Paediatric Neurology)

(Source: BBC News | Health | UK Edition)

Journal of Perinatal Medicine 39 (6): 741-741 No abstract available (Source: Journal of Perinatal Medicine)

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Conclusions  These results support the hypothesized correspondence between clinical phenotypes and frontal cortex–basal ganglia circuits. Antipsychotic treatment effects comply with formal conceptions that dopamine serves as a teaching signal for reinforcement learning. Furthermore, we suggest that, unlike typical antipsychotics, aripiprazole may preserve reward sensitivity and hence avoid blunting motivational drives. (Source: Archives of General Psychiatry)

This study sought to investigate the possible correlation of several immunological and biochemical markers with Tourette’s syndrome. Children with Tourette’s syndrome attending a tertiary pediatric medical center from May 2008 to April 2010, and healthy age-matched control subjects underwent a comprehensive biochemical and immunological work-up. Demographic data were abstracted from the medical records. Findings were compared between the groups and analyzed statistically. Sixty-eight children with Tourette’s syndrome (58 males, 85.3%) and 36 healthy children (25 males, 69.4%) were recruited. Compared with the control group, the Tourette’s syndrome group had significantly higher levels of ferritin (p = 0.01) and hemoglobin (p = 0.02), a lower level of zinc (...

Authors: Liu SG, Zhang XH, Yin YY, Wang MJ, Che FY, Ma X PMID: 22117805 [PubMed - in process] (Source: CNS Neuroscience and Therapeutics)

Authors: Greene DJ, Schlaggar BL Abstract In a recent American Journal of Psychiatry article, Wang and colleagues used functional MRI (fMRI) to examine cortico-striatal-thalamo-cortical circuitry in Tourette syndrome (TS), advancing the field's investigation of circuit level dysfunction in vivo in individuals with TS. Their results provide insight for interrogating neural mechanisms underlying different treatment methods. PMID: 22133579 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher] (Source: Trends Cogn Sci)

From Strictly Come Dancing to football, there is a class of cursers who literally don't know they are swearingIf you are one of the 600 people who recently complained about the use of the word "sod" on Strictly Come Dancing, you might be advised not to read the next sentence of this article. If you are the judge who has just ruled that the word "f." is not necessarily offensive when spoken in public, you may find the previous sentence inexplicable.The gulf in opinion on acceptable language is starkly illustrated by the proximity of these cases. It's tempting to see a division – of the kind beloved by the popular press – between ordinary decent people and an out-of-touch legal elite. But both linguistic positions turn more subtly on the question of the intent with which a word was used ...

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