Health & Science

Men get a shot at birth control

The holy grail of birth control is a pill that does for men what The Pill does for women, with no side effects. That goal remains elusive, but Chinese scientists say they may have finally developed a highly effective male contraceptive method, based, surprisingly enough, on monthly testosterone shots. In a new study of 1,000 sexually active men, scientists from the National Research Institute for Family Planning in Beijing found that the testosterone shots greatly reduced the average male’s sperm count in about 99 percent of the cases, making them effectively infertile. Over a given year, the incidence of a man on testosterone shots getting a woman pregnant was about 1 percent. That’s compared to 0.3 percent for the pill and 2 percent for condoms. “If a male contraceptive like this became available, it would give people another choice,” Lawrence Shaw of the British Fertility Society tells BBCnews.com. “At the moment, the onus is on the woman.” Chinese researchers said most men became fertile again about six months after discontinuing the shots, which disrupt the normal balance of hormones necessary for sperm production. The main side effect of the shots was a change in sex drive, with most of the men becoming more amorous, not less.

The great American bat plague

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A contagious fungus is spreading through much of the bat population in the U.S., and has already killed about 500,000 of these ecologically useful creatures. “White-nose syndrome” is caused by a fungus that grows over the bat’s face and sometimes spreads to its wings. The fungus acts as a parasite, sapping bats’ strength and resources until they die of starvation. White-nose syndrome “is the bat version of the black plague,” Joe Kath of the Illinois Department of National Resources tells the Chicago Tribune. Bats are natural predators of mosquitoes and other bugs, so their absence would have a noticeable impact. One bat can consume up to 3,000 insects in a single night. Concerned that amateur spelunkers could be helping to spread the disease, the U.S. Forest Service has decided to seal off the entrances to caves in 33 states.

A genetic link to autism

By comparing the DNA of more than 12,000 people, researchers have found the first evidence that at least some autism cases are caused by genetic defects. A wide variety of explanations has been advanced to explain autism, but until now, there has been no proof to support any of them. An international team of geneticists compared the genomes of hundreds of autistic people with the genomes of a broad spectrum

of the population, and discovered that 65 percent of those with autism had altered versions of genes for “cadherins,” sticky proteins that bolster neural connections. Many autistic people, they found, also have abnormal genes for ubiquitin, a “housekeeping” protein that sweeps away old neural connections so that new ones can be made. These gene differences, along with a set of possible environmental factors during fetal development, can cause abnormal connections in the brain, producing symptoms such as an inability to communicate, poor social abilities, and repetitive behaviors. Genetic scientist Hakon Hakonarson of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, who worked on the study, tells the Los Angeles Times that these genetic defects explain at least 15 percent of autism cases. He says pinpointing the defective genes “opens up the opportunity” for genetic therapies that could help autistic people gain normal functioning.

Bullying and mental illness

Children who are bullied are more likely to develop symptoms of psychosis later in life, says a survey of more than 6,000 kids. Kids who get picked on between the developmentally critical ages of 8 and 10 are twice as likely to develop hallucinations, delusions, or other symptoms of psychosis as they get older. Whether maltreatment by peers is physical or consists of psychological abuse such as being verbally tormented or shunned, it has a very serious effect on the preteen psyche, says study author Andrea Schreier. “Chronic or severe peer victimization has nontrivial, adverse, long-term consequences,” she writes in Archives of General Psychiatry. Still, she says it’s possible that kids are bullied because they exhibit early signs of mental illness, rather than bullying causing their illness.

Why quack cures persist

Many home remedies and folk medicines remain popular even though there’s no evidence that they work. A new Australian study says that quack cures persist precisely because they don’t work. The chain of mistaken conclusions goes like this: A person wears a copper bracelet to treat her arthritis, or rubs some homemade salve on a wart. Friends seeing this conclude that the person wouldn’t use the treatment if it didn’t work, so they, too, begin using copper bracelets and homemade salves. Since these treatments are ineffective, the condition persists, and the gullible keep using them, exposing more and more people to their folly. So the chain of self-deception grows. Researcher Mark Tanaka tells New Scientist that just seeing friends and relatives using folk medicines is enough evidence for many people to give them a try. “People don’t necessarily know that what somebody is trying is going to work.”