It is now official - text messaging can be bad for you or, more probably, your teenage son or daughter. That, at least, is the opinion of Dr Mauro Novello, a GP in the Ligurian port of Savona, northern Italy, who has just diagnosed "acute tendonitis of the thumb due to excessive SMS messaging" for a 14-year-old patient.
Last week, the Rossi family took their 14-year-old daughter along to Dr Novello's surgery. The girl had complained of a serious pain in her thumb, making it impossible for her to move it.
When the doctor looked at the swollen thumb, he initially presumed that the girl had hurt it playing tennis, or working out at the gym.
When the girl insisted that nothing untoward had happened at either the gym or during tennis lessons, Dr Novello was a little puzzled. In the middle of his consultation, however, the girl's mobile phone went off. The inopportune call on the mobile prompted Dr Novello to ask the girl just how often she used the phone, and how many text messages she sent per day.
"A lot and about 100 per day," came the answer.
The mystery of the swollen thumb was there and then solved. Prescribed treatment has involved the use of an anti-inflammatory medicine, a total ban on text messaging and, no doubt, the statutory stand-up row between parents and teenagers about the use or abuse of cell phones.
So, the moral is: MayB U Shd Stop B4 its 2L8.