Smoke Signals August 1990 Page 9
HEALTH
Facts About AIDS, Hepatitis
What is AIDS?
AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syn
drome. It's a disease in which the body's immune system
breaks down. The immune system fights off infections
and certain other diseases. Because the system fails, a
person with AIDS develops a variety of life threatening
illnesses. .
AIDS is Caused by HTV Infection
AIDS is caused by the virus called the immunodefi
ciency virus, or HIV. A virus is a small germ that can
cause disease.
If HIV enters your bloodstream, you may become
infected with HIV. A special blood test can detect HIV
infection.
A person who is infected can infect others, even if no
symptoms are present. You cannot tell by looking at
someone whether he or she is infected with HIV. An
infected person can appear completely healthy.
Some Disturbing Facts
Surveys have found that:
The average age for a boy in the United States to have
sexual intercourse for the first time is IS and a half. The
average age for a girl is 16.
It is estimated that 2.5 million teens are infected with
sexually transmitted diseases (venereal disease) each
year.
AIDS is sexually transmitted.
Sixty percent of all American high school seniors have
used illegal drugs. Some of these drugs are injected.
The virus that causes AIDS is spread through the
sharing of IV drug needles or syringes.
What is Hepatitis?
Hepatitis is an injury to the liver which can be caused
by many things including bacteria, drugs and alcohol.
The different types of hepatitis common in Alaska are
type A and B, and non-A and non-B.
. .Hepatitis A
The hepatitis A virus is passed from the infected
person's stool to a non-infected person's mouth, usually
through food or drink. The water you drink can have
hepatitis A if your water supply has been contaminated
by someone who has the virus.
It takes two weeks to two months for a person to get
sick with hepatitis A after the virus enters the body.
Hepatitis B
The hepatitis B virus is present in large amounts in
blood, semen and the fluids in a woman's period. It is
found in smaller amounts in other body fluids also. It is
not in stools. An infected person can pass hepatitis B to
his or her partner. A pregnant mother with hepatitis B
can pass it to her baby.
t
NEW YORK - Men who use cocaine may be harming
their fertility, say researchers who suggest that may help
explain why some couples have trouble conceiving a
child.
In a study of men from couples consulting a fertility
clinic, cocaine use was associated with low sperm counts
and other problems that can reduce a man's fertility,
researchers said.
Analysis suggested the apparent effect of cocaine may
disappear after the drug use stops, study co-author
Michael Bracken, professor of epidemiology, obstetrics
and gynecology at Yale University, said Tuesday.
The Gene and the Bottle
Scientists link alcoholism to
a flawed bit of DNA
Scientists have long suspected that a tendency to drink
too much is in some part hereditary. Children of
alcoholics are not only more likely than others to
become problem drinkers themselves; studies have
shown that they share distinctive brain-wave patterns,
and that they're slower than people with nonalcoholic
parents to feel the effects of a given dose of booze.
These and other findings- such as the fact that rats can
be bred cither to crave or to shun alcohol-all suggest
that something in an individual's genetic makeup can
place him at risk. The question is, what?
Last week, for the first time, medical researchers
unveiled what looks like a partial answer. Their suspect:
a gene that affects the brain's handling of dopamine, one
of the chemicals involved in the body's response to
alcohol. Writing in the Journal of the American Medical
Association, Kenneth Blum of the University of Texas,
San Antonio, and Dr. Ernest Noble of UCLA reported
that an aberrant form of the so called dpamine D2
receptor gene was strongly associated with alcoholism in
the small group of people they studied. The finding
could lead to radical new strategies for preventing and
treating drinking problems, but it won't yield a complete
explanation of why people become alcoholics. Even if
larger studies confirm the role of the D2 receptor gene,
it will remain but one piece in a large and complex .
puzzle.
Blum and Noble's study was based on genetic analysis
of tissue samples from 70 cadaver brains, half of which
had belonged to severe alcoholics. Noble and his col
leagues in Los Angeles compiled extensive medical
records on the donors and sent the tissue samples to
Texas, identified only by code numbers. Blum's team
then tested each sample for the aberrant form-thc so
called a-1 allele-of the dopamine D2 receptor gene.
When the genetic analysis and the clinical histories
where combined, a striking pattern emerged: the a-1
allele showed up in 69 percent of the alcoholics' tissue
samples but in just 20 percent of the samples drawn
from nonalcoholics. Among the 70 subjects, every
carrier of the suspect gene had 77 percent chance of
being an alcoholic;each noncarrier had a 72 percent
chance of not being an alcoholic.
No one knows how this genetic aberration might
propel people toward drunkennessj'Blum and Noble
suspect it may foster an appetite for alcohol and other
drugs by suppressing dopamine activity. The dopamine
D2 receptor gene directs the construction of tiny portals
on surfaces of neurons. In a normal brain, those portals
absorbdopamine as its released by neighboring cells. If
the a-1 allele produces defective portals, Noble specu-
Cocaine May Hamper Fertility
But a specialist in male infertility cautioned that the
study does not show that cocaine use caused infertility in
the men. "This is provocative but by no means evidence
of cause and effect," Richard Sherins of the Genetics
and IVF Institute of Fairfax, Va. said.
The study included 40 men with low sperm counts, 77
who had sperm with low motility, which essentially
means too' few sperm were swimming correctly, and 75
who had high concentrations of abnormally shaped
sperm. Each of these problems can contribute to
infertility.
Cocaine use by these 192 men was compared to that of
lates, then carriers of that allele may end up with a
chronic dopamine defect-and an inordinance fondness
for substances that stimulate production of the chemical.
If a simple blood test could be developed to identify
children who carry this and other troublesome genes, he
reasons, those kids could be taught to handle intoxicants
with special care. Future drugs might even let erstwhil
substance abusers adjust their dopamine levels safely.
For the moment.this is all a fantasy. Blum and Noble
concede that the aberrant gene is not yet "ready to be
used as a diagnostic marker for the risk of alcoholism."
There is no guarantee it ever will be. For one thing, the
current study involed only 35 of the nations's estimated
18 million alcoholics. Until larger studies produce
similar results, the possibility will remain that the corre
lation between the gene and the condition was just a
statistical fluke. Even if the correlation holds, the
question of how paticular genes are related to
people'sdrinking behavior will remain wide open.
As Dr. Enoch Gordis and his colleagues at the Na
tional Institute on Alcoholism note a commentary on
the new study, no one knows whether these genes are
going to be specific for alcoholism or be of more general
influence on affect, appetite, personality or behavior."
Unmet appetites: Even if future research confirmed
that the a-1 allele interferes with dopamine metabolism,
causing a craving for alcohol, we would be far from
understanding the alcoholic's self-destructive behavior.
Everyone lives with unmet physical appetites, notes
philosopher Herbert Fingarette, the author of "Heavy
Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease."
There's nothing in the dopamine theory to explain why
one person responds irrationally while the next person
doesn't. Blum and Noble's own study showed that 23
percent of those with the a-1 allele didn't become
drunks, and that 28 percent of the noncarriers did.
Likewise, the sexes are at equal risk of inheriting the
suspect gene, yet American men suffer more than five
times as much alcoholism as women.
Blum and Noble gladly concede that social factors can
override genetic predispositions. That's why they're so
optimistic about the possibility of warning carriers of the
heightened risk they face. Whether children should be
branded "at risk" of a behavioral problem on the basis
of genetic tests is debatable. But that debate is a long
way off. The more immediate question is whether such
tests could be reliable. Blum and Noble are now analyz
ing tissue samples froma large group of living subjects-
Courtesy of Newsweek
284 other male partners of couples who consulted the
clinic but did not have these problems.
Researchers found that men who had low sperm counts
were twice as likely as men in the comparison group to
have used cocaine within the previous two years. And
they were five times as likely to have used it once a
month or more and within the previous two years, or to
have used it once a month or more and for two to four
years.
Men with the motility problem were twice as likely as
the comparison group to have used cocaine for five or