The discovery of G6PD deficiency relied heavily upon the testing of prisoner volunteers at Illinois State Penitentiary, a type of study which today is considered unethical and cannot be performed. When some prisoners were given the drug primaquine, some developed hemolytic anemia but others did not. In spite of these results, the US military administered the drug widely during the Korean War to prevent the relapsing infection caused by Plasmodium vivax hypnozoites. Numerous cases of hemolytic anemia were observed in US soldiers of North African and Mediterranean descent.After studying the mechanism through Cr51 testing, it was conclusively shown that the hemolytic effect of primaquine was due to an intrinsic defect of erythrocytes. Society and culture
In both legend and mythology, favism has been known since antiquity. The priests of various Greco-Roman era cults were forbidden to eat or even mention beans, and Pythagoras had a strict rule that to join the society of the Pythagoreans one had to swear off beans. This ban was supposedly because beans resembled male genitalia, but it is possible that this was because of a belief that beans and humans were created from the same material. References
External links

Family Practice Notebook/G6PD Deficiency (Favism)
Hyperesthesia is a condition that involves an abnormal increase in sensitivity to stimuli of the sense. Stimuli of the senses can include sound that one hears, foods that one tastes, textures that one feels, and so forth. Increased touch sensitivity is referred to as "tactile hyperesthesia", and increased sound sensitivity is called "auditory hyperesthesia". In the context of pain hyperaesthesia can refer to an increase in sensitivity where there is both allodynia and hyperalgesia.In psychology, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin uses the term by defining it as an "exacerbation des sens": 37  that characterizes gifted individuals: for them, the sensory information reaches the brain much faster than the average, and the information is processed in a significantly shorter time. Other animals
Feline hyperesthesia syndrome is an uncommon but recognized condition in cats, particularly Siamese, Burmese, Himalayan, and Abyssinian cats. It can affect cats of all ages, though it is most prevalent during maturity. Detection can be somewhat difficult as it is characterized by brief bursts of abnormal behavior, lasting around a minute or two. One of its symptoms is also found in dogs that have canine distemper disease (CD) caused by canine distemper virus (CDV). See also
Auditory processing disorder
Hyperacusis
Multisensory integration
Sensory overload
Sensory processing
Sensory processing disorder
Sensory processing sensitivity

References


== External links ==