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Internet addiction fueled by gene mutation, scientists say

Internet addiction is real, researchers out of the University of Bonn say, and its source can be explained at the molecular level.

Researchers from the school's departments of psychology and neuroscience report in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Addiction Medicine that a simple variation on the CHRNA4 gene results in a significantly higher prevalence of Internet addiction -- and particularly in women.

"Internet addiction is not a figment of our imagination," lead author Christian Montag says in a news release. "The current data already shows that there are clear indications for genetic causes of Internet addiction... If such connections are better understood, this will also result in important indications for better therapies."… Read more

Doing drugs? Beware this fingerprinting device

A U.K. company is now unveiling what it calls the world's first prototype handheld device that doubles as a fingerprint scanner and drug testing device.

In a matter of minutes, the portable device can detect the presence of a wide range of drugs using dyed antibodies that, as we reported back in July, stick to metabolites in the sweat of the fingerprints and change color depending on the presence of drugs.

"The launch of this prototype is a significant milestone," Paul Yaltes of development firm Intelligent Fingerprinting said in a statement. "There has already been … Read more

Want to quit smoking? Try text message support

A study of almost 6,000 people trying to quit smoking cigarettes finds that those who receive regular motivational text messages are twice as likely to quit than those who receive neutral text messages thanking them for participating in the study.

The txt2stop trial, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, measured cotinine (a chemical in tobacco) levels in the participants six months after participants reported to try quitting.

The randomly selected txt2stop group received five text messages a day for five weeks and then three a week for the following 26 weeks, with encouragements such as: "Cravings last less than 5 minutes on average. To help distract yourself, try sipping a drink slowly until the craving is over."

The txt2stop group was also able to text words such as "crave" and "lapse" to receive a motivating message during episodes of weakness and craving.

The control group, meanwhile, received only one message every two weeks thanking participants for being part of the trial.

Only 4.9 percent of the control group abstained from smoking throughout the six months, as determined through cotinine testing, while more than twice as many members (10.7 percent) of the txt2stop group succeeded.

"We are delighted with the results and hope that text motivation will now become a standard part of the quitting process," says Glyn Mcintosh of QUIT, which helped develop the text messages and find volunteers for the study.

The researchers, whose findings appear in The Lancet this week, say that txt2stop worked well across all age and social groups in the study.… Read more