(Press-News.org) The harmful effects of increasingly popular designer cannabis products called "Spice" or "K2" have puzzled scientists for years, but now a group of researchers is reporting progress toward understanding what makes them so toxic. The study, published in the ACS journal Analytical Chemistry, describes development of a method that could someday help physicians diagnose and treat the thousands of young adults and teens who end up in emergency rooms after taking the drugs.
Jeffery Moran and colleagues note that synthetic marijuana, often marketed as "natural incense," "potpourri," Spice or K2, is a significant public health concern, and 1 in 9 high school seniors admit recent use. The products appear across the United States and Europe, and are the second most popular drug after real marijuana for many American teens and young adults. The substances produce a "high," but also can cause a wide range of dangerous side effects including seizures, hallucinations, severe kidney damage, psychotic behavior and heart attacks. Scientists are quickly playing catch-up to understand how these fake pot products work in order to identify them in users' urine and to treat the devastating health effects, which, in some cases, plague users for months after they initially take it.
To gain insight into the effects of designer marijuana products, Moran's team developed a new method and used it to study how the body processes two popular forms in Spice and K2, known as JWH-018 and AM2201. Urine samples from 15 people who tested positive for use showed significant differences in how the individuals' bodies processed the drugs. This finding could help explain why some people experience more severe effects from the drugs than others.
###
The authors cite funding from the Association of Public Health Laboratories and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 163,000 members, ACS is the world's largest scientific society and a global leader in providing access to chemistry-related research through its multiple databases, peer-reviewed journals and scientific conferences. Its main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.
To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.
Follow us: Twitter Facebook END
Toward understanding the dangers of the fake marijuana called 'Spice' or 'K2'
2013-10-02
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Recruiting E. coli to combat hard-to-treat bacterial infections
2013-10-02
The notorious bacteria E. coli is best known for making people sick, but scientists have reprogrammed the microbe — which also comes in harmless varieties — to make it seek out and fight other disease-causing pathogens. The researchers' report appears in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology and describes development of this new type of E. coli that can even kill off slimy groups of bacteria called biofilms that are responsible for many hard-to-treat infections, such as those that take hold in the lungs, the bladder and on implanted medical devices.
Matthew Wook Chang and ...
Freedom and choice key to restorative lunch breaks, says new study.
2013-10-02
Toronto -- "We found that a critical element was having the freedom to choose whether to do it or not," says John Trougakos, , who is an associate professor in the Department of Management at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and holds a cross-appointment to the UofT's Rotman School of Management. "The autonomy aspect helps to offset what we had traditionally thought was not a good way to spend break time."
Co-written with Bonnie Cheng, a Rotman PhD student, Prof. Ivona Hideg of Wilfrid Laurier University (who is also a graduate of the Rotman PhD program) and Prof. ...
Increasing accessibility of 3-D printing raises concerns about plastic guns
2013-10-02
Three-dimensional printers can make artists' and hobbyists' dreams a reality, opening up a new world of inexpensive, on-demand plastic parts manufacturing, producing anything from garden gnome figurines to nuts and screws, but there's also a dark side. As these printers — now available at major U.S. retail stores — become more popular, concerns are growing about their use for designing and building custom plastic firearms — weapons that could conceivably go undetected. The cover story in Chemical & Engineering News, the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, ...
Seamless photography: Using mathematical models for image stitching
2013-10-02
Philadelphia, PA—A photo captures only as much as the camera in use will allow, and is therefore limited by the field of view of the camera's lens. In the case of smartphones and many advanced cameras, the view from the lens is much smaller than the view from your own eyes.
Panoramic photographs were invented to capture large objects or scenes that could not otherwise fit within the constraints of a single photo. Panoramic photography is achieved through image stitching, a process that combines two or more photographs, seamlessly blending input images with overlapping ...
Early spring warming has greatest effect on breaking bud
2013-10-02
DURHAM, N.C. -- The timing of the first leaves on trees and plants can make or break an agricultural season. Too early, and the leaves might be blasted by the last frost. Too late and they miss out on maximizing the growing season.
But as climate change brings warmer-than-usual winters to the U.S., the plants may be more vulnerable to imprecise timing, and the tools traditionally used by farmers and horticulturists to predict the season may be inadequate.
"How do we do a better job of seeing the climate the way the plants see it?" asks James Clark, the Blomquist Professor ...
Douglas Institute researchers identify the neural circuits that modulate REM sleep
2013-10-02
A team of scientists led by Dr. Antoine Adamantidis, a researcher at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute and an assistant professor at McGill University, has released the findings from their latest study, which will appear in the October issue of the prestigious scientific journal Nature Neuroscience.(1)
Previous studies had established an association between the activity of certain types of neurons and the phase of sleep known as REM (rapid eye movement). Researchers on the team of Dr. Antoine Adamantidis identified, for the first time, a precise causal link ...
Rice U study: Technology, not uninsured patients, driving hospital costs
2013-10-02
Technology, not uninsured patients, likely explains the steep rise in the cost of hospital care in Texas in recent years, according to Vivian Ho, the chair in health economics at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, a professor of economics at Rice and a professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Her findings were reported in an article appearing in the Oct. 1 online edition of the journal Healthcare Management, Practice and Innovation.
Ho emphasized her findings contradict a public perception that the rising numbers of uninsured persons explains ...
California's new mental health system helps people live independently
2013-10-02
CORVALLIS, Ore. – A new analysis by Oregon State University researchers of California's mental health system finds that comprehensive, community-based mental health programs are helping people with serious mental illness transition to independent living.
Published in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health, this study has important implications for the way that states finance and deliver mental health programs, and speaks to the effectiveness of well-funded, comprehensive community programs.
In November of 2004, California voters passed the Mental ...
Transgendered males seen as an asset to some ancestral societies
2013-10-02
Transgendered androphilic males were accepted in traditional hunter-gatherer cultures because they were an extra set of hands to support their families. Conversely, by investing in and supporting their kin, these males ensured that their familial line – and therefore also their own genetic make-up – passed on to future generations despite their not having children of their own. This is according to an ethnographic study led by Doug VanderLaan of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Canada, published in Springer's journal Human Nature. The study reports that this ...
Likelihood of childhood obesity is linked to weight gained by mother during pregnancy
2013-10-02
Women who gain excessive weight in pregnancy are more likely to have overweight and obese children, according to a new study published this week in PLOS Medicine. A study by David Ludwig from Boston Children's Hospital in the USA and colleagues has concluded that even after making allowances for differences in birthweight, the likelihood of a child becoming obese is linked to the amount of weight that the mother gained in pregnancy.
In order to find out whether childhood obesity was due just to the conditions during pregnancy (which influence birthweight) or whether ...