Science Erin Brockovich: Cause Of Rare Teen Syndrome May Be Cyanide.Erin Brockovich has announced that it will look into an outbreak of Tourette's like symptoms among a group of high school students in western New York to see if they have environmental causes.
About 15 girls in high school Le Roy have developed strange symptoms since last fall: uncontrollable outbursts of verbal and physical tics so debilitating that a student interviewed by ABC must use a wheelchair.
New York Department of Health authorities studying the issue have found no evidence of environmental causes or infectious agents. Some have been diagnosed with the disease as a type of conversion disorder in which psychological stress can cause a variety of physical symptoms.
Although the causes may be in the mind, the effects can be very disabling. According to the Mayo Clinic, they may include difficulty swallowing, deafness, convulsions and even paralysis.
Since more than a dozen girls in the same school came down with symptoms in a short period of time, this case was labeled as mass hysteria, which is when a conversion disorder occurs in a large group of people.
However, warns the NYU Langone Medical Center, the symptoms are very real and should not be taken lightly. "It is important to understand that the symptoms of conversion disorder are involuntary, that is, the person does not consciously act, or pretend they have symptoms," according to the center page on the subject. "A characteristic of these symptoms is their lack of connection to any known organic medical diagnoses."
But Brockovich, whose pursuit of a cover-up industrial contamination in a small town in California inspired the Oscar-nominated film, named after her, out of chemical spill four-decade-old as a suspect potential, and said she will investigate to see if it could be the culprit or be expelled for good.
About 15 girls in high school Le Roy have developed strange symptoms since last fall: uncontrollable outbursts of verbal and physical tics so debilitating that a student interviewed by ABC must use a wheelchair.
New York Department of Health authorities studying the issue have found no evidence of environmental causes or infectious agents. Some have been diagnosed with the disease as a type of conversion disorder in which psychological stress can cause a variety of physical symptoms.
Although the causes may be in the mind, the effects can be very disabling. According to the Mayo Clinic, they may include difficulty swallowing, deafness, convulsions and even paralysis.
Since more than a dozen girls in the same school came down with symptoms in a short period of time, this case was labeled as mass hysteria, which is when a conversion disorder occurs in a large group of people.
However, warns the NYU Langone Medical Center, the symptoms are very real and should not be taken lightly. "It is important to understand that the symptoms of conversion disorder are involuntary, that is, the person does not consciously act, or pretend they have symptoms," according to the center page on the subject. "A characteristic of these symptoms is their lack of connection to any known organic medical diagnoses."
But Brockovich, whose pursuit of a cover-up industrial contamination in a small town in California inspired the Oscar-nominated film, named after her, out of chemical spill four-decade-old as a suspect potential, and said she will investigate to see if it could be the culprit or be expelled for good.
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