Boys May Gain Popularity From Antisocial Antics
Aggressive, antisocial behavior may not endear you to your peers if you’re an adult, but it can make you one of the most popular boys in a fourth-grade classroom, North Carolina researchers report today.
The finding is important, said psychologist Philip C. Rodkin of Duke University, because intervention programs for the antisocial usually focus on unpopular students and may thus miss many boys who need help despite their popularity.
Rodkin and his colleagues studied 452 boys in the fourth through sixth grades in Chicago and North Carolina, including inner-city, suburban and rural schools. They report in Developmental Psychology that most of the popular boys, both African American and white, were model children--athletic, cooperative, studious and sociable.
But about a third of the very popular children were extremely antisocial, tending to argue, be disruptive, get into trouble and start fights. Surprisingly, these boys were viewed as popular by both students and teachers. African American boys in predominantly white classrooms were particularly likely to be both antisocial and very popular.
That popularity may make it harder later in life for such boys to adjust to societal norms, Rodkin said. If they have come to associate aggression with popularity and control, “they may not hesitate to use physical aggression as a social strategy,” he said. In short, many will become bullies.
Disruptive Boys May Lack Key Hormone
Researchers have long been searching for a biological basis for aggressive and disruptive behavior. One predisposing factor in boys may be low levels of the stress hormone cortisol, according to a team from the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Psychologist Keith McBurnett and his colleagues studied 38 boys who had been referred to a psychiatric clinic for disruptive behavior, collecting saliva samples in addition to performing the normal psychological testing. They reported in Friday’s Archives of General Psychiatry that boys with consistently low cortisol levels in their saliva began antisocial acts at a younger age than those with normal levels, exhibited three times the number of aggressive symptoms, and were three times as likely to be singled out by their classmates as mean or combative.
Although the mechanism connecting cortisol levels to aggressive behavior is unclear, McBurnett suspects that variation in its levels may serve as a marker for abnormalities in the production of various stress hormones.
Costs and Benefits of Circumcision
About one in every 500 infant boys undergoing a circumcision may suffer a complication from the procedure, but about one in every 100 may derive a benefit, according to the largest study of circumcisions undertaken.
Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington School of Medicine examined all hospital records for the state from 1987 to 1996, finding 354,297 male births. Of those boys, 130,475 had circumcisions in the hospital.
The research team reported in a supplement to Tuesday’s Pediatrics that 287 of the boys, or one in every 476, had complications related to the procedure. The most common complications were bleeding during the operation and damage to the penis requiring further treatment. The team’s estimate is very conservative, Christakis said, because it does not include common complications, such as infections, that develop after children leave the hospital.
The most commonly cited benefits from circumcision are a decrease in urinary tract infections and a small decrease in the incidence of penile cancer. Last March, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that the benefits are not significant enough for the academy to recommend circumcision as a routine procedure.
Study Absolves Microbe in Multiple Sclerosis
Chlamydia pneumoniae, a common bacterium that causes respiratory infections such as pneumonia, does not play a role in multiple sclerosis as had been suggested by a study released last year, researchers say. The initial study reported evidence of the bacterium in the spinal fluid of 17 multiple sclerosis patients.
Intrigued by those findings, Dr. Margaret Hammerschlag and her associates at the University of New York Health Science Center in Brooklyn and the University of Umea in Sweden studied the spinal fluid of 48 Swedish multiple sclerosis patients and 51 with other neurological diseases. They reported in Tuesday’s Neurology that they found no evidence of Chlamydia pneumoniae in spinal fluid from any of the patients with either MS or other diseases.
Unusual Cancer Pattern Tied to Down Syndrome
Down syndrome patients have an unusual pattern of cancer risk, according to Danish researchers. It has long been known that people with the birth defect have a much higher-than-normal risk of developing leukemia, especially during the first four years of life. But Dr. Henrik Hasle and his colleagues from Aarhus University Hospital report in Saturday’s Lancet that they have an unusually low risk of developing solid tumors--such as lung or liver cancer--later in life.
The findings, Hasle said, suggest that there are both several leukemia-promoting genes and several tumor-suppressing genes on chromosome 21. Down syndrome is caused by the presence of an extra copy of chromosome 21, one of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes that make up the human genetic blueprint.
Report Cites Two Forms of Colorectal Cancer
Colorectal cancer, the most deadly cancer in the United States after lung cancer, occurs in two distinct genetic forms that may require different treatments, according to Canadian researchers. The two forms are triggered by different genetic mechanisms and have different outcomes, a team headed by Dr. Robert Gryfe of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto reported in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.
About 83% of colorectal cancers are caused by gross abnormalities in chromosomes, the team found in a study of 607 patients. The other 17% are caused by invisible genetic alterations of a type called microsatellite instability. Although the tumors caused by microsatellite instability were larger than the others, the team found, they were less likely to spread throughout the body and were thus less lethal.
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Medical writer Thomas H. Maugh II can be reached at thomas.maugh@latimes.com.
