NASA Opens Canister With Asteroid Sample | ADHD Prescription Rates Spiked During The Pandemic

Engineers had to design bespoke tools to open the OSIRIS-REx capsule nearly four months after it arrived back on Earth. Also, prescription rates for ADHD drugs rose by 30% from 2020-2022, with large increases among women and young people.

NASA Finally Opens Canister Containing Asteroid Sample

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx was the first U.S. mission to retrieve fragments of an asteroid, which arrived in September 2023. There was just one small issue: NASA technicians couldn’t open the capsule, which held space rocks from an asteroid called Bennu. NASA announced this week that they finally managed to open the capsule on January 10. Engineers designed new tools to remove the final two of 35 fasteners, which would not budge.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Maggie Koerth, science writer and editorial lead for Carbon Plan, about the asteroid capsule and other top science news of the week, including chimpanzees catching human colds, advances toward a cure for autoimmune disorders and honeybee crimes.

ADHD Prescription Rates Spiked During The Pandemic–Why?

The rate of prescriptions for ADHD medications rose by 30% during the height of the pandemic, from 2020 to 2022. Most of these new prescriptions were given to people between the ages of 20 and 39. And the prescription rate for those assigned female at birth, including women and some trans people, doubled during this time as well, according to a recent study. Prescriptions for anxiety and depression medications did not rise at a similarly high rate during that time.

While it’s still not entirely clear what led to this dramatic increase, experts point to several contributing factors: The pandemic changed routines and made lifelong ADHD symptoms more apparent, content creators on social media platforms like TikTok increased awareness of symptoms, and a proliferation of online pharmacies expedited diagnosis and prescriptions for ADHD medications like Adderall.

Guest host Arielle Duhaime-Ross speaks with Dr. Julia Schechter, co-director of Duke University’s Center for Girls & Women with ADHD, to make sense of these trends.

Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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