Seizures

Olympic sprint champion Florence Griffith Joyner died after suffering an epileptic seizure, according to autopsy results released Thursday, and her family and friends say they hope the findings will put to rest rumors that drug use contributed to her death. Griffith Joyner died last month in her sleep at age 38. Her husband, Al Joyner, bitterly criticized those who suggested that she took performance-enhancing drugs.

The powerful narcotic popped up on the cultural grid around the turn of the millennium. A Texas producer-remixer named DJ Screw paid homage to its woozy, heavy-lidded high by dramatically slowing down beats and vocals to replicate the drug's sleepwalker euphoria. Among Southern rappers, the chemical mixture - called "sizzurp" on the street - soon became as ubiquitous as gold jewelry. This wasn't some exotic new hallucinogen. In fact, it was usually mixed with fruit soda and sipped from oversized plastic foam cups.

A 15-year-old girl died Tuesday of a suspected drug overdose after attending a rave over the weekend at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum that had a minimum age requirement of 16. The girl, identified by family members as Sasha Rodriguez, was one of two rave attendees who were in critical condition at California Hospital Medical Center after the 14th annual Electric Daisy Carnival. As Sasha's family decided whether to remove her from life support Tuesday, her mother, Grace Rodriguez, told the CBS Evening News: "I was supposed to be planning her Sweet Sixteen party.

In the heart of the Ethiopian community here, a group of friends gathered after work in an office to chew on dried khat leaves before going home to their wives and children. Sweet tea and sodas stood on a circular wooden table between green mounds of the plant, a mild narcotic grown in the Horn of Africa. As the sky grew darker the conversation became increasingly heated, flipping from religion to jobs to local politics. Suddenly, one of the men paused and turned in his chair.

In Tijuana, schoolchildren get lessons on how to duck during gangland shootouts. Ciudad Juarez cops patrol with military escorts, and the morgue there is spilling over with gunshot victims. But here in Mexicali, people fear the desert sun more than drug hit men. The city of 700,000 has a homicide rate comparable to that of Wichita, Kan., and one of the biggest police deployments is Operation Beat the Heat, in which officers haul blocks of ice to shantytown residents. There hasn't been a bank robbery in Mexicali in 18 months, or a reported kidnapping in a year.

There are more than 25 diseases that are transmitted sexually. Many have serious and costly consequences. Some of the most common and serious STDs include: Chlamydia * Used to Be Called: Non-gonoccocal urethritis. * Cause: Bacteria. * Number Affected: About 4 million new cases each year in the United States. * Infection Rate: Highest among 15- to 19-year-olds, followed by 20- to 24-year-olds. * At Risk: Everyone, but female teens are more likely to be infected because of immature cervix.

Chances are, your medicine cabinet contains some pills that are past their expiration date. You might even have some pain relievers, some cough syrup or some sleeping pills that were purchased back when Richard Nixon was in the White House. But you can't seem to throw them away because you suspect they might still be OK to take. If you've wondered whether medicines really do need to be tossed after their expiration date, you're got some company at the California Poison Control System, UC San Francisco and UC Irvine.

Sizzurp, purple drank, lean -- that cough-syrup-laced concoction of many  names -- has been gaining popularity in hip hop culture and notoriety as more celebrities fall prey to its effects. Rapper Lil Wayne was hospitalized at Cedars-Sinai last week, reportedly linked to use of the prescription-strength medication. The codeine in the medicine serves as a pain reliever and also suppresses coughing, said Dr. George Fallieras, an emergency room physician and hospitalist at Good Samaritan Hospital.

The first outbreak was devastating enough. But within weeks came another outbreak. Then another and another. For Gina Caprio, then 22, the virus that causes genital herpes was nightmarish, "like my life was over." An antiviral drug managed to keep the virus under control, preventing recurrences, but she had to take it every day, year-round.

The Food and Drug Administration is warning physicians that women who suffer migraine headaches and are pregnant or may become pregnant should not use the drugs valproate or valproic acid to prevent the severe headaches, in light of new evidence showing those taking the drugs during pregnancy have children with lower IQ scores than women who do not take them. That warning represents a strengthening of a boxed warning that already appears on these prescription medications, which are used to control epileptic seizures, to treat bipolar disorder, and to prevent and relieve migraine headaches.