Children's Health
Using a Fan During Sleep May Reduce Infants’ SIDS Risk
Infants who slept in a bedroom with a fan ventilating the air had a 72 percent lower risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome compared to infants who slept in a bedroom without a fan, according to a new study by the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research. The study appears in the October issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.
This is the first study to examine an association between better air ventilation in infants’ bedrooms and reduced SIDS risk.
The finding is consistent with previous research that showed factors influencing a baby’s sleep environment may change SIDS risk. Among those factors are sleeping on the stomach and soft bedding, both of which may limit air ventilation around an infant’s breathing pathway and thus increase the chance of re-breathing exhaled carbon dioxide, said the researchers.
Major study of opiate use in children’s hospitals provides simple steps to alleviate harm
Hospitalized kids with painful ailments from broken bones to cancer are often dosed with strong, painkilling drugs known as opiates. The medications block pain, but they can have nasty side effects. Constipation, for instance, is one side effect that can cause discomfort and even extend a child’s hospital stay.
“No parent wants their child in the hospital any longer than necessary,” said Paul Sharek, MD, MPH, medical director for quality management and chief clinical patient safety officer at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. Sharek is the primary author of a new study, detailing the first large multicenter trial in children to show a decrease in harm from pain medications. It shows how simple changes to hospital procedures can sharply reduce the harm children suffer from opiates. The study, a yearlong collaboration between 14 U.S. children’s hospitals, documented a 67 percent drop in harmful events caused by the pain relievers when these procedures were implemented.
“Our collaborative aim was to decrease adverse drug event rates by 50 percent,” Sharek said. “We far exceeded that, which was very exciting.”
Parents foster significant misperceptions of children’s weight
Results of a survey presented at the American College of Gastroenterology’s 73rd Annual Scientific Meeting in Orlando revealed that many parents do not accurately perceive their children as overweight or at risk for adulthood obesity. Obesity in the United States is often accompanied by an increased risk of gastrointestinal diseases and has emerged as a major health concern, particularly the issue of obesity among children and adolescents.
Researcher Rona L. Levy, Ph.D. and her colleagues at the University of Washington in Seattle and the University of Minnesota measured parental perceptions of their children’s current weight and perceived risk for developing obesity as an adult.
Forty-six parents of children ages 5 to 9 with a body mass index (BMI) in the 70th percentile or higher were recruited for the study. Child height and weight were measured during a routine pediatric clinic visit. Parents were mailed a series of questionnaires, which included questions on their perception of their child’s current weight, and whether they perceived that their child was at risk for developing obesity as an adult.
Study Finds No Correlation Between Newborn Thryoid Function within Normal Range, Cognitive Developme
There is no correlation between newborn thyroid function within the normal range and cognitive development, nor is there a correlative between maternal thyroid function and newborn thyroid function in a Boston-area sample, according to data to be presented on Oct. 4, 2008 at the 79th Annual Meeting of the American Thyroid Association (ATA) in Chicago, IL. Normal thyroid function is essential for healthy brain development. Previous studies have suggested that even mild maternal hypothyroidism during pregnancy may adversely affect child cognitive development.
On behalf of Project Viva, a team of researchers led by Dr. Emily Oken of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Dr. Elizabeth Pearce of Boston University Medical Center in Boston, Mass., studied 500 children born 1999-2003 to evaluate the relationship between thyroxine levels in newborns, first trimester maternal thyroid function, and childhood cognition. Researchers first tested mothers’ thyroid stimulating hormone, thyroxine, and thyroid peroxidase (TPO) antibody levels at an average of 10.2 weeks gestation and later measured newborns’ thyroxine levels from whole blood samples after birth.
Researchers then performed cognitive testing when the infants were six months old using the visual recognition memory (VRM) test, a measure of infant cognition that can predict later childhood IQ and specific abilities in perceptual speed, language, and memory. When the children were three years old, researchers tested them with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT), a measure of verbal ability or scholastic aptitude, and the Wide Range Assessment of Visual Motor Ability (WRAVMA), which evaluates visual-spatial analysis, visual-motor ability, and fine motor skills.
Pertussis: Adults can fall severely ill too
Pertussis, also known as whooping cough, is not just a childhood disease. The pathogen Bordetella pertussis is highly infectious and an infection may occur at any age. The risk of a pertussis infection can be greatly reduced by vaccination, as Marion Riffelmann of the Krefeld Institute for Infectious Diseases and her colleagues report in the current Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2008; 105(37): 623-8).
http://www.aerzteblatt.de/v4/archiv/pdf.asp?id=61518
Pertussis is actually one of the classical diseases of childhood and mainly occurs in unvaccinated babies.
Cochlear implants in children a safe procedure
In the six decades since French and American surgeons implanted the first cochlear hearing devices, the procedure in children has become reliable, safe, and relatively free of severe complications, according to research presented during the 2008 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO, in Chicago, IL.
The study, conducted by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO, determined that out of 155 cases of pediatric implantation between 2001 and 2006, the rate of the most common complications in patients was below 3 percent, with only 25 total complications observed during that period. The most common complication was related to local surgical wounds in the ear flap. Furthermore, the rate of device failure, which was cited as the most common complication in previous studies, was very low in this study.
The researchers stress that it is critical that patients undergo a lifetime of continuous follow-up.
Chronic infection most common cause of adult tonsillectomy
Efforts to fill in holes in data regarding the primary causes of tonsillectomy in adults have determined that chronic infection is the most common reason for the procedure, according to new research presented at the 2008 American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation (AAO-HNSF) Annual Meeting & OTO EXPO, in Chicago, IL.
The study, conducted by researchers at Emory University and Johns Hopkins University, reviewed the medical records of 361 adult patients who had tonsillectomies between 2001 and 2007. Among this group, over 50 percent (207 patients) had the surgery to treat chronic infection to the tonsils and throat, while a quarter (98 patients) had procedures done to correct upper airway obstructions. No trends in complications emerged as significantly different from those of the pediatric population.
Tonsillectomy in adults, while significantly less common than that in the pediatric population, still accounts for a third of all tonsillectomies.
Smoking during pregnancy can put mums and babies at risk
Pregnant women who suffer from the high risk condition pre-eclampsia — which leads to the death of hundreds of babies every year — are putting the lives of their unborn children at significantly increased risk if they continue to smoke during pregnancy.
But experts at The University of Nottingham have also shown that if women give up smoking before or even during pregnancy they can significantly reduce these risks.
The study linking smoking and pre-eclampsia was carried out by the Genetics of Pre-Eclampsia Consortium (GOPEC) and was funded by the British Heart Foundation. The results have just been published in the journal Hypertension.
Violence against women impairs children’s health
Violence against women in a family also has serious consequences for the children’s growth, health, and survival. Kajsa Åsling Monemi from Uppsala University has studied women and their children in Bangladesh and Nicaragua and shows, among other things, that children whose mothers are exposed to violence grow less and are sick more often than other children.
Kajsa Åsling Monemi, paediatrician, the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, monitored more than 3,000 children in Bangladesh from the women’s pregnancy tests till when the children were two years old. The study shows that children to women exposed to some form of violence had lower birth weights and grew less as infants and toddlers. They also got sick more often than other children with diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia.
“Both in Bangladesh and Nicaragua deaths before the age of five were more common among children whose mothers had been exposed to violence than among children of women who had never been subjected to violence,” she reports.
Breast or bottle? New mothers get mixed message
After giving birth in the United States, a woman is likely to leave the hospital with the message that breast-feeding is best for her baby—and a free sample of baby formula, as well as discount coupons to buy formula for her newborn.
That’s despite the fact that federal health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are opposed to giving new mothers free formula samples when they leave the hospital, as are the American Academy of Pediatrics, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the World Health Organization.
In a report released this week, Anne Merewood of Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues say the prevalence of sample formula pack distribution is “disturbing and incongruous given extensive opposition, but encouraging trends suggest that the practice may be curtailed in the future.”
Increase in Youth Suicide Rate Following Decade-Long Decline May Reflect Emerging Health Crisis
A sudden and dramatic increase in pediatric suicides may reflect an emerging trend rather than a single-year anomaly. That’s the conclusion of new suicide research, conducted at The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and published in the September 3rd issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which looked at pediatric suicide trends over a 10-year period.
Following a decade of steady decline, the suicide rate among U.S. youth younger than 20 years of age increased by 18 percent from 2003-2004 – the largest single-year change in the pediatric suicide rate over the past 15 years. Although worrisome, the one-year spike observed in 2003-2004 does not necessarily reflect a changing trend. Therefore, researchers examined national data on youth suicide from 1996-2005 in order to determine whether the increase persisted from 2004-2005, the latest year for which data are available.
Researchers estimated the trend in suicide rates from 1996-2003 using log-linear regression. Using that trend line, they estimated the expected suicide rates in 2004 and 2005 and compared the expected number of deaths to the actual observed number of deaths. Researchers found that although the overall observed rate of suicide among 10 to 19 year olds decreased by about 5 percent between 2004 and 2005 (the year following the spike) both the 2004 and 2005 rates were still significantly greater than the expected rates, based on the 1996-2003 trend.
Brain changes seen in former anorexics
Young women who suffered from anorexia during their teen years have persistent changes in the structure of their brains, and deficits in cognition, if they haven’t fully recovered from the illness, according to Canadian investigators.
Dr. Debra K. Katzman at the University of Toronto, Ontario and her associates studied 66 young women, 21 years old on average, who had been treated for anorexia nervosa as adolescents. The group was compared with a “control” group of 42 healthy age-matched women.
For the former anorexia patients, the average interval from initial treatment to follow-up was 6.5 years. All subjects underwent a clinical examination, MRI brain scans, and cognitive evaluation.
Why Only-Children Rule
I have one older brother, and when I was growing up our family was considered tiny. Only-kids were freaks.
I’m afraid there’s a puppy in my future. It’s not because one of my daughter’s first complete sentences was “I want a puppy.” Or because my 16-year-old Siamese cat still acts as though my kid is an intruder in our home. It’s certainly not because I actually believe that my dear child will take responsibility for walking a dog three times a day. Nope, we will probably end up with a labor-intensive pet because my 7-year-old is a wizard at spotting and exploiting my maternal guilt. (That’s a sign of intelligence, isn’t it?) “If I can’t have a brother or sister to play with,” she asks, “can’t I at least have a puppy?” Her strategy is transparent, yet effective because I feel guilty that my daughter is an only child. I worry that she won’t learn to share. I can’t escape the desire for an “heir and a spare,” especially after watching the anguish of Chinese parents who lost only-children in the recent earthquake. I wish my kid had a built-in playmate, or, if my own sibling relationship is any guide, someone to fight with in the back seat of the car.
Students with food allergies often not prepared
College students with food allergies aren’t avoiding the foods they know they shouldn’t eat. Students of all ages are not treated with potentially life-saving epinephrine as often as they should be. And instructors, roommates and friends often are not aware of what to do if a food-allergic student has a reaction.
These are some of the findings of recent studies at the University of Michigan Health System. The research suggests that many college students with food allergies aren’t taking the threat of a reaction seriously enough, or are regularly in environments where they could not be properly treated during an emergency. In addition, grade-school students are often in school environments where there is no food allergy policy, and where instructors are not trained how to treat an emergency food allergy reaction.
In four related studies about food allergies, the researchers found a common theme: “Food-allergic individuals need to increase the awareness of their food allergy among the people around them,” says lead researcher Matt Greenhawt, M.D., MBA, who conducted the research while he was a fellow in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at the U-M Health System and now is an associate at the Allergy & Asthma Center, LLC in the Atlanta metro area.
US teens often watch extremely violent movies
A telephone survey of 6,522 teens, between 10 and 14 years of age, reveals that, overall, up to 48 percent have watched a movie with extreme graphic violence. However, in certain subgroups, such as black males, rates over 80 percent were seen.
Concerns have been raised about the harmful effects of exposure to violent media, Dr. Keilah A. Worth and colleagues note in the journal Pediatrics, yet data regarding the occurrence of such exposure among teens is lacking.
In the new study, Worth, from Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire, assessed exposure to 40 movies that were rated R for violence by the Motion Picture Association of America, UK 18 by the British Board of Film Classification, and were determined to have extreme violence by trained content coders.
