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Query: UMLS:C0036572 (seizures)
 80,221 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

New Jersey State Superior Court Judge Jose L. Fuentes has ruled unconstitutional a state law allowing victims of sexual assault to require their accused attackers to be tested for HIV. Fuentes says the 1993 law intrudes on defendants' right to privacy and constitutes an illegal search and seizure while leaving the victim with no useful information about her own HIV status. The decision resulted from a case involving an attack on a mentally retarded 10-year-old Hudson County girl by three boys, ages 14 and 15. The boys were charged with aggravated sexual assault by forcing oral and anal sex on the girl. The prosecution moved to have the boys tested for HIV under terms of the 1993 state law. On behalf of the boys, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argued that the testing amounted to an unconstitutional search and seizure. In reaching his decision, Fuentes relied on defense testimony from experts in the field of HIV and sexual assault, who testified that the victim would receive little useful information from the HIV-antibody tests. The judge found that the state law involved a substantial intrusion into the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. A prosecutor for the case plans to appeal the decision.
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PMID:Judge voids N.J. law allowing testing of rape defendants. 1136 2

The Appellate Division of a New Jersey Superior Court ruled that two statutes allowing sexual assault victims to require their assailants to undergo HIV-antibody testing are constitutional. This decision marks the first time the Fourth Amendment has been addressed by a New Jersey appeals court. In 1995, three teenage boys sexually assaulted a 10-year-old mentally retarded girl. Her guardians moved to have the boys tested for HIV. Superior Court Judge, Jose L. Fuentes, initially concluded that such testing would constitute an intrusion on the defendants' search and seizure rights without reassuring the victim of her own HIV status. The three-judge panel of the New Jersey Appeals Court overturned the decision, explaining that the victim's rights outweigh the assailants' right to Fourth Amendment protection. Courts in California, Illinois, and Washington have upheld mandatory testing in cases of criminal assault.
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PMID:Court upholds law allowing testing of rape defendants. 1136 67

The abuse of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), flunitrazepam, ketamine hydrochloride, and gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is discussed. Club drugs are chemical substances used recreationally in social settings. Use is increasingly frequent among young people, especially during all-night dance parties. All four agents have been classified as controlled substances. MDMA ("ecstasy") is available as a tablet, a capsule, and a powder; formulations may contain many adulterants. MDMA increases the release of neurotransmitters. The desired effects are euphoria, a feeling of intimacy, altered visual perception, enhanced libido, and increased energy. The most common adverse effects are agitation, anxiety, tachycardia, and hypertension. More serious adverse effects include arrhythmias, hyperthermia, and rhabdomyolysis. Flunitrazepam is a potent benzodiazepine. At higher doses, the drug can cause lack of muscle control and loss of consciousness. Other adverse effects are hypotension, dizziness, confusion, and occasional aggression. Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic used primarily in veterinary practice. It may be injected, swallowed, snorted, or smoked. Like phencyclidine, ketamine interacts with the N-methyl-D-aspartate channel. Analgesic effects occur at lower doses and amnestic effects at higher doses. Cardiovascular and respiratory toxicity may occur, as well as confusion, hostility, and delirium. GHB, a naturally occurring fatty acid derivative of gamma-aminobutyric acid, was introduced as a dietary supplement. Increasing doses progressively produce amnesia, drowsiness, dizziness, euphoria, seizures, coma, and death. Flunitrazepam, ketamine, and GHB have been used to facilitate sexual assault. Supportive care is indicated for most cases of club drug intoxication. The increasing abuse of MDMA, flunitrazepam, ketamine hydrochloride, and GHB, particularly by young people in social settings such as clubs, should put health care professionals on guard to recognize and manage serious reactions.
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PMID:Club drugs: methylenedioxymethamphetamine, flunitrazepam, ketamine hydrochloride, and gamma-hydroxybutyrate. 1206 92

Rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), dissociative symptoms, and childhood sexual abuse (CSA) are believed to be higher among patients with nonepileptic seizures (NES) than those with epileptic seizures (ES). However, women have higher rates of CSA and sexual assault than men. Comparisons of seizure type controlling for gender may produce different results. Data from an opportunity sample of 34 patients with ES and 17 with NES evaluated during or following phase 1 video-EEG monitoring demonstrated that patients with NES had statistically higher rates of PTSD and CSA and higher Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) scores than patients with ES. No differences were found between women with NES and ES for histories of PTSD or CSA. Mean between-group DES score differences remained. Results indicated that PTSD, dissociation, and CSA may be common among women presenting to a tertiary epilepsy referral center for both ES and NES. Neither a positive history of CSA nor a history of PTSD was evidence against epilepsy.
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PMID:Posttraumatic stress disorder, dissociation, and sexual abuse history in epileptic and nonepileptic seizure patients. 1469 97

Gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is an increasingly popular drug of abuse that causes stimulation, euphoria, anxiolysis or hypnosis, depending on the dose used. Low doses of the drug are used recreationally, and also implicated in drug-facilitated sexual assaults. Because of the unusually steep dose-response curves, accidental GHB overdosing, leading to coma, seizures or death can occur. Being a controlled substance, GHB is often substituted with its non-scheduled precursors gamma-butyrolactone (GBL) and 1,4-butanediol (BD), which are rapidly metabolized into GHB in the body. Here we describe an assay for GHB, GBL and BD in blood and/or urine samples. GHB and BD were extracted from diluted 200 microL aliquots of samples with t-butylmethylether (plus internal standard benzyl alcohol) in test tubes preloaded with NaCl. After acidification and centrifugation the solvent phase was transferred to a test tube preloaded with Na(2)SO(4), incubated for 30 min, centrifuged again, and evaporated in vacuum. The residue was mixed with N-methyl-N-trimethylsilyl-trifluoroacetamide (MSTFA) in acetonitrile, and injected into a GC-MS. When analyzing GBL, the salting-out step was omitted, and analysis was performed with a GC-FID apparatus. As revealed by the validation data this procedure is suitable for quantitative determination of GHB and its precursors in blood and/or urine samples.
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PMID:Determination of gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) and its precursors in blood and urine samples: a salting-out approach. 1765 10

Drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) is a serious and troubling crime. It is important to know if and how different drugs might be used to facilitate assault in order to deter such crime. There are a number of ways in which drugs that are used for DFSA might not be detected by routine screens. The purpose of this analysis was to draw reasonable inferences regarding drugs with a high likelihood of being used for DFSA and not being detected by routine screens. National data from poison control centres, hospital emergency rooms, and law enforcement seizures were used to evaluate the relative magnitude of problems and illicit availability associated with different classes of drugs. General drug classes were examined to include additional drugs that might be used for DFSA on the basis of their amnesic effects, widespread availability, and pharmacokinetics (i.e. short half-life). The benzodiazepine-site ligands zolpidem and eszopiclone, 'club drugs' GHB and ketamine, muscle relaxants such as carisoprodol, and antihistamines such as diphenhydramine were identified as drugs that might be used for DFSA and remain undetected by routine screens. Future studies that are designed to examine the role of these drugs in DFSA cases could provide better estimates of their use for DFSA. A better understanding of what is being missed in DFSA cases might help prioritize the development of new assays, provide rationale for the availability of particular assays for routine testing, and inform practitioners and the general public of the potential DFSA risks of certain drugs.
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PMID:Potential impact of drug effects, availability, pharmacokinetics, and screening on estimates of drugs implicated in cases of assault. 2196 May 42

Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB) is a naturally occurring analog of gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) that has been used in research and clinical medicine for many years. GHB was used clinically as an anesthetic in the 1960s but was withdrawn due to side effects that included seizures and coma. GHB has been implicated in a number of crime types; most notably in drug-facilitated sexual assault. GHB is abused by three main groups of users: Body builders who use the substance believing that it stimulated the release of growth hormone; sexual predators who covertly administer the drug for its sedative and amnesic effects and club-goers (rave parties) who take the drug for its euphoric effects. The short-lived hypnotic effects, relative safety and widespread availability of the drug have made it particularly well suited to this role. The drug has an addictive potential if used for long term. The primary effects of GHB use are those of a CNS depressant and therefore range from relaxation, to euphoria, confusion, amnesia, hallucinations, and coma. Despite the increased regulation, GHB remains widely available through the Internet where one can easily purchase the necessary reagents as well as recipes for home production. There are reports of patients being unresponsive to painful stimuli and cases of oral self-mutilations linked to the abuse of GHB, though quiet rare. Such cases should remind odontologists that intra-oral lesions may be the result of self-mutilation either due to mental illness or altered states caused by the use of prescription or non-prescription drugs.
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PMID:GHB acid: A rage or reprive. 2435 46

Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB) is a central nervous system depressant effecting GABA-B receptors. GHB is taken along with other psychoactive substances like alcohol, cocaine, ecstasy, and amphetamines especially during parties. Due to the fact that it has been linked to sexual assault, GHB has drawn attention in recent years. This substance is often taken by youngsters and results in euphoric states of mind, signs of relief, easiness in communication, increases in sexual appetite, and experiences of different states of mind. Dizziness, hypotension, bradycardia, nauseation, and vomiting are typical toxication symptoms of GHB. Also, epileptic seizures, respirotary depression, and deaths have been reported as a result of taking GHB. It is widely known that the use of GHB in our country has increased gradually. This case report is important as it summarizes the anamnesis, penetration, and clinical symptoms of GHB. In order to prevent the use of GHB, it would be appropriate to develop psycho-education methodologies, establish legislative regulations, and include GHB tests in substance screening analyses.
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PMID:A New Psychoactive Substance, Gamma Hydroxybutyrate (GHB): A Case Report. 3152 53

In this case study, we present a 21 years old female with long-standing Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) who, following a sexual assault, also developed Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), leading to a change in her seizure semiology. The new seizures seemed to be a re-enactment of the sexual assault and accordingly were at first thought to be Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures (PNES). Nevertheless, electroencephalography (EEG) recording at the Epilepsy Monitoring Unit (EMU) revealed ictal epileptic brain activity during these new attacks. In order to further explore the nature of the relation between epileptic seizures and PTSD symptomatology, a functional MRI (fMRI) scan was conducted focusing on neural response to threat (fearful faces). The results indicated that the response to threat elicited bilateral amygdala activation, as well as enhanced amygdala connectivity with the insula and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), all central nodes of the fear circuitry. Accordingly, we suggest that this unique presentation of "pseudo" PNES might stem from the anatomical proximity of the epileptic network in this patient (temporal-insular-frontal) to the fear circuitry, allowing abnormal epileptic activity to "exploit" or activate the fear circuit or vice versa. We further propose that the traumatic experience may have changed the patient's ictal semiology by modifying the course of the spread of the ictal activity toward the PTSD network.
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PMID:Interaction of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Network Analysis of a Single Case. 3267 Jan 29