Early Tamiflu treatment helps kids with influenza
Expeditious treatment with the anti-viral drug Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, can markedly reduce the duration of illness, symptom severity, and complications in children with influenza, according to study findings presented earlier this month at the World Society for Pediatric Infectious Disease meeting in Bangkok.
This is “the first time that a dramatic reduction in influenza severity duration, complications and antibiotic use” has been shown when Tamiflu was started within 24 hours of illness onset, study researcher Dr. Keith Reisinger, from Primary Physicians Research in Pittsburgh, told Reuters Health.
When mom has AIDS, kids’ mental health may suffer
Uninfected children of HIV-infected mothers should be screened and followed up long-term for psychiatric problems, pediatricians from New York recommend, based on their experience.
Over 2 years, Dr. Laurie J. Bauman from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx measured the mental health of a group of 8- to 12-year-old children whose mothers had late-stage HIV/AIDS.
Obese teens may be at risk of depression later
Obese teenage girls may be more likely than their thinner peers to develop depression or anxiety disorders as adults, a study suggests.
Researchers found that among nearly 800 children and teenagers followed for 20 years, girls who were obese as teens had a roughly four-times higher risk of clinical depression or anxiety disorders in adulthood.
Pregnant women pass on the effects of smoking
Smoking during pregnancy has many adverse effects on fetal development. A new study in mice by Andrea Jurisicova and colleagues at the University of Toronto, Canada, now adds the possibility that smoking before pregnancy or while breast-feeding might substantially decrease the fertility of female offspring to the long list of possible negative outcomes.
