Links Containing Search Words: “Somali”

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Unfounded Autism Fears Are Fueling Minnesota's Measles Outbreak

Mark Zdechlik Health officials in Minnesota have been scrambling to contain a measles outbreak that has sickened primarily Somali-American children in the state. So far health officials have identified 34 cases, still mostly in Hennepin County, and they're worried there will be more. In Minnesota, the vast majority of kids under two get vaccinated against measles. But state health officials say most Somali-American 2-year-olds have not had the vaccine — about six out of ten. As the outbreak spreads, that statistic worries health officials, including Michael Osterholm, who directs the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy. Understanding The History Behind Communities' Vaccine Fears Shots - Health News Understanding The History Behind Communities' Vaccine Fears "It is a highly concentrated number of unvaccinated people," he says. "It is a potential kind of gas-and-match situation." Measles is a highly contagious respiratory disease that causes a rash and fever. It can be deadly, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two doses of vaccination are about 97 percent effective in heading off the disease. The Minnesota Department of Health says the outbreak began in Hennepin County, home to Minneapolis and the heart of the nation's Somali-American community. © 2017 npr

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 5: Hormones and the Brain; Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 8: Hormones and Sex; Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 23574 - Posted: 05.05.2017

How safe are the vigorous neck manipulations done by chiropractors?

By Susan Berger, The chiropractor had just worked on Lynne Beliveau’s neck when she became dizzy, unable to see or move. Rushed to the hospital, Beliveau had a shunt inserted to relieve pressure caused by swelling in her brain. The Ashburn woman suffered a series of strokes and today, eight years later, the 41-year-old mother of three suffers from constant vertigo. Elizabeth Haran Caplan knew she was in trouble seconds after a chiropractor in Oklahoma City manipulated her neck. The room got dark and she felt dizzy. Because of her years of service as a combat medic in Kosovo and Somalia, she knew what was happening and yelled, “Stop. I’m having a stroke.” More than a decade later, she is blind in her left eye and has problems swallowing without choking due to paralysis of one side of her throat. Approximately 20 million Americans visit chiropractors each year, according to the American Chiropractic Association, seeking relief from back pain, neck pain, headaches, sinus problems, ringing in the ears and more. For many, the manipulations provide relief. But one of the techniques chiropractors use, called cervical neck manipulation or “cracking the neck,” has raised concerns that it can cause serious harm. “I have jumped out of airplanes, escaped bullets in Somalia,” said Haran Caplan, 47, who retired from the Army nine years ago as a lieutenant colonel. “Who knew the most dangerous place I would put myself would be on a chiropractor’s table?” © 1996-2014 The Washington Post

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 19: Language and Lateralization
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 15: Language and Lateralization
Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 19109 - Posted: 01.08.2014

Study Links Autism and Somalis in Minneapolis

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. A long-awaited study has confirmed the fears of Somali residents in Minneapolis that their children suffer from higher rates of a disabling form of autism compared with other children there. The study — by the University of Minnesota, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the research and advocacy group Autism Speaks — found high rates of autism in two populations: About one Somali child in 32 and one white child in 36 in Minneapolis were on the autism spectrum. The national average is one child in 88, according to Coleen A. Boyle, who directs the C.D.C.’s Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities. But the Somali children were less likely than the whites to be “high-functioning” and more likely to have I.Q.s below 70. (The average I.Q. score is 100.) The study offered no explanation of the statistics. “We do not know why more Somali and white children were identified,” said Amy S. Hewitt, the project’s primary investigator and director of the University of Minnesota’s Research and Training Center on Community Living. “This project was not designed to answer these questions.” The results echoed those of a Swedish study published last year finding that children from immigrant families in Stockholm — many of them Somali — were more likely to have autism with intellectual disabilities. The Minneapolis study also found that Somali children with autism received their diagnoses late. Age 5 was the average, while autism and learning disabilities can be diagnosed as early as age 2, and children get the most benefit from behavioral treatment when it is started early. Black American-born children and Hispanic children in Minneapolis had much lower autism rates: one in 62 for the former and one in 80 for the latter. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 7: Life-Span Development of the Brain and Behavior
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 4: Development of the Brain
Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 19044 - Posted: 12.17.2013

In the dark, cave fish follows its own rhythm

By Tina Hesman Saey A fish that swims in limestone caverns under the Somalian desert has something to tell scientists about keeping time. Despite living in permanent darkness, with no difference between day and night, this blind cave-dweller still has its own quirky sense of rhythm. The Somalian cave fish, Phreatichthys andruzzii, has an inner timekeeper that ticks out a roughly 47-hour cycle set by food rather than sunlight, scientists from Italy, Germany and Spain report online September 6 in PLoS Biology. This odd biological clock may teach scientists more about the molecular pathways that govern such clocks, why clocks are important to organisms and how living things adapt when their clocks are no longer tied to cycles set by the rising and setting of the sun. Most animals, plants and some kinds of bacteria follow the sun’s cue in setting their own daily clocks. These biological, or circadian, clocks help govern sleeping, waking and feeding times, the rise and fall of blood pressure and other daily rhythms. Generally, circadian clocks follow an approximately 24-hour cycle and are reset largely by sunlight. When people’s circadian clocks aren’t set correctly, jet lag and even long-term health problems can result. Researchers study fish and other organisms to learn how circadian clocks’ gears mesh. Somalian cave fish have been cut off from the sun for up to 2.6 million years. Adapting to life in the dark has not only caused the fish’s eyes (as well as its scales and skin coloring) to disappear, but also altered its clock, say study authors Nicholas S. Foulkes of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, Cristiano Bertolucci of the University of Ferrara in Italy and their colleagues. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 14: Biological Rhythms, Sleep, and Dreaming
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 10: Biological Rhythms and Sleep
Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Evolution
Link ID: 15781 - Posted: 09.08.2011

What If Vitamin D Deficiency Is a Cause of Autism?

By Gabrielle Glaser As evidence of widespread vitamin D deficiency grows, some scientists are wondering whether the sunshine vitamin—once only considered important in bone health—may actually play a role in one of neurology's most vexing conditions: autism. The idea, although not yet tested or widely held, comes out of preliminary studies in Sweden and Minnesota. Last summer, Swedish researchers published a study in Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology that found the prevalence of autism and related disorders was three to four times higher among Somali immigrants than non-Somalis in Stockholm. The study reviewed the records of 2,437 children, born between 1988 and 1998 in Stockholm, in response to parents and teachers who had raised concerns about whether children with a Somali background were overrepresented in the total group of children with autism. In Sweden, the 15,000-strong Somali community calls autism "the Swedish disease," says Elisabeth Fernell, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and a co-author of the study. In Minnesota, where there are an estimated 60,000 Somali immigrants, the situation was quite similar: There, health officials noted reports of autism among Somali refugees, who began arriving in 1993, comparable to those found in Sweden. Within several years of arrival, dozens of the Somali families whose children were born in the U.S. found themselves grappling with autism, says Huda Farah, a Somali-born molecular biologist who works on refugee resettlement issues with Minnesota health officials. The number of Somali children in the city's autism programs jumped from zero in 1999 to 43 in 2007, says Ann Fox, director of special education programs for Minneapolis schools. The number of Somali-speaking children in the Minneapolis school district increased from 1,773 to 2,029 during the same period. © 1996-2009 Scientific American Inc.

Autism Rates Are Higher for U.S.-Born Somali Children in Minneapolis

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. Confirming the fears of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, the Minnesota Health Department agreed Tuesday that young Somali children there appeared to have higher-than-usual rates of autism. Though health officials emphasized that their report was based on very limited data, they concluded that young Somali children appeared to be two to seven times as likely as other children to be in classes for autistic pupils. Dr. Sanne Magnan, the state health commissioner, said the finding was “consistent with the observations by parents,” who have been saying for more than a year that alarming numbers of Somali children born in this country have severe autism. Somalis began immigrating into the area in the 1990s, fleeing civil war in their homeland. The report made no effort to explain why the children had autism. Its authors did not examine children or their medical records. They accepted the diagnoses — some by doctors, some by school evaluators — that admitted children to special-education classes, and they calculated rates for different ethnic groups. They counted only 3- to 4-year-olds, only children in Minneapolis public schools, and only children born in Minnesota. They drew no comparisons with Somalis in other cities. There have been anecdotal reports of higher autism rates among Somalis in some American cities, and no formal studies. A small study in Sweden reported high rates among Somali schoolchildren in Stockholm. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

An Outbreak of Autism, or a Statistical Fluke?

By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. MINNEAPOLIS — Ayub Abdi is a cute 5-year-old with a smile that might be called shy if not for the empty look in his eyes. He does not speak. When he was 2, he could say “Dad,” “Mom,” “give me” and “need water,” but he has lost all that. He does scream and spit, and he moans a loud “Unnnnh! Unnnnh!” when he is unhappy. At night he pounds the walls for hours, which led to his family’s eviction from their last apartment. As he is strapped into his seat in the bus that takes him to special education class, it is hard not to notice that there is only one other child inside, and he too is a son of Somali immigrants. “I know 10 guys whose kids have autism,” said Ayub’s father, Abdirisak Jama, a 39-year-old security guard. “They are all looking for help.” Autism is terrifying the community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis, and some pediatricians and educators have joined parents in raising the alarm. But public health experts say it is hard to tell whether the apparent surge of cases is an actual outbreak, with a cause that can be addressed, or just a statistical fluke. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Use of illegal drug khat up in some cities

Copyright © 2002 AP Online By STEPHANIE V. SIEK, Associated Press COLUMBUS, Ohio - An influx of immigrants from Somalia and other African and Middle Eastern countries has led to increased use in some U.S. cities of the illegal drug khat, a leaf that is chewed for its amphetamine-like high, authorities say. Khat has been seen in cities such as Detroit and New York since the 1980s. But it was virtually unknown in Columbus and Minneapolis until the late 1990s, law enforcement authorities say. Use of the drug appears to be confined largely to immigrant communities, police in Columbus and Minneapolis say. Copyright © 2001 Nando Media

Related chapters from BN: Chapter 4: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Related chapters from MM:Chapter 3: The Chemistry of Behavior: Neurotransmitters and Neuropharmacology
Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 2624 - Posted: 06.24.2010

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Links Containing Search Words: “Somali”