October 15, 2006, 7:09 PM CT

Adolescent And Fluoxetine

New research offers tantalizing clues as to why some teenagers taking common anti-depressants may become more aggressive or kill themselves. The research is reported in the October Behavioral Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Neuroresearchers at the University of Texas at Austin observed that juvenile hamsters given low doses of fluoxetine hydrochloride, which is sold in the United States as Prozac, became more aggressive on low doses of the drug. Juveniles given high doses became somewhat less aggressive, but not as much as adult hamsters, who calmed down on both high and low doses.

Doctoral student and lead author Kereshmeh Taravosh-Lahn, BA, says the findings confirm that juvenile and adult brains are different. Thus, she says, "It is unwise to expect a drug to work the same in juveniles as in adults." .

Fluoxetine, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI), is the only medicine approved to treat depression in children and adolescents. However, it has carried an FDA "black box" warning since Fall 2004 due to findings of increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in some children and adolescents on the drugs. Fluoxetine affects the regulation of serotonin, a naturally occuring neurotransmitter believed to be involved in depression, by keeping it available longer in the brain's synapses. It is known to inhibit aggression in adult hamsters. Hamsters are often used as an animal model for studying the neural basis of social behavior, given how the rodents' youthful play fighting develops in clearly understood stages into adult aggression.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

October 15, 2006, 6:27 PM CT

Potential New Treatments For Birth Defects

May be after a while those babies need not be born with cleft lip and palate. New research is paving way for therapy of these birth defects while they are still in womb.

University of Manchester scientists have uncovered the causes behind two genetic conditions that lead to facial anomalies including clefts, where the lip and often the roof of the mouth, or palate, fail to form properly.

Working with colleagues at the University of Iowa, Manchester husband and wife team Mike and Jill Dixon together with researcher Rebecca Richardson, have identified the role of a gene called IRF6.

"We had previously shown that a mutation in the IRF6 gene causes Van der Woude syndrome a rare inherited form of cleft lip and palate," said Professor Mike Dixon, a dentist based in the Faculty of Life Sciences.

"It has also been observed that defects in this gene are responsible for a significant number of other cleft lip and palate disorders that are not correlation to any particular syndrome".

The team established that mice missing the gene developed abnormal skin as well as cleft palate. Further analysis revealed that IRF6 controls the development of keratinocytes the main type of cells in the outer layers of the skin, known as the epidermis.

"Put simply, mutations of IRF6 in Van de Woude syndrome make the skin cells too sticky, so they stick to each other and other types of cell much sooner than they should resulting in these facial anomalies," said Professor Dixon.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

October 13, 2006, 4:53 AM CT

Studying Pediatric AIDS Vaccine

Researchers at Makerere University, in Kampala, Uganda, along with researchers from Johns Hopkins and other institutions worldwide, have begun the first clinical safety trial in Africa of a vaccine to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV through breastfeeding. Breast milk is a leading route of infection in the developing world, as per the United Nations World Health Organization, which estimates that each day 1,800 newborns are infected with the AIDS virus, 30 percent to 40 percent by virus carried in their mother's milk.

Enrollment of the first newborn took place at Mulago Hospital in Kampala. The so-called phase I study is designed to test the safety of injecting newborns with the vaccine, formally known as ALVAC-HIV (vCP1521). If the vaccine is found to be safe in this study, and if it is later shown to be effective in reducing the chance of infants' becoming infected during breastfeeding, scientists estimate that it could potentially stop up to 8,000 of Uganda's 22,000 infections a year in children. Initial results are expected by mid-2007.

"A vaccine is the easiest way to help prevent mother-to-child transmission of the disease, as healthy alternatives to breastfeeding, such as infant formula, are not available or affordable to most new mothers in the developing world, a number of of whom do not know they are HIV positive," says study protocol chair and pediatric infectious disease specialist Laura Guay, M.D., who will lead Hopkins' efforts.........

Posted by: Mark      Permalink         Source

October 12, 2006, 10:20 PM CT

Down Syndrome: Not Just The Age Factor

Whether or not a pregnant woman will give birth to a child with Down Syndrome is not simply a matter of how old she is. Eventhough it is a fact that as women get older, they are more likely to have a child with Down Syndrome, other factors also play a role. As per Markus Neuhäuser and Sven Krackow, from the Institute of Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology at University Hospital Essen, in Gera number of, the risk of a child being born with Down Syndrome is also dependent on how a number of existing siblings the child has and how big the gap is between the child and his immediate preceding sibling. The research is published in Springer's journal Naturwissenschaften this week.

Neuhäuser and Krackow evaluated and analysed data from 1953 and 1972 (before abortion was widespread). They observed that other factors, besides the mother's increasing age, were associated with the number of Down Syndrome cases. Down Syndrome rates were significantly higher in older mothers in their first pregnancy than in older mothers who had already had children. Only late first pregnancies were more likely to produce a Down Syndrome baby, not late second or third pregnancies. In addition, the larger the gap between pregnancies, the higher the rates of Down Syndrome.

Down Syndrome is the result of the genetic abnormality trisomy 21. Trisomy has been the focus of extensive medical research but the exact mechanism is not yet understood. One feature common to most trisomies is an increase in frequency of trisomic pregnancies with increasing maternal age. There is good evidence for uterine selection against genetically disadvantaged embryos. However, as women approach the menopause and the risk of future infertility increases, this selection, or filtering stringency, is expected to relax.........

Posted by: Emily      Permalink         Source

October 11, 2006, 8:20 PM CT

Allergy Runs In The Family

Infants whose parents have allergies that produce symptoms like wheezing, asthma, hay fever or hives risk developing allergic sensitization much earlier in life than previously reported, as per a research studyby Cincinnati researchers.

The study suggests that the current practice of avoiding skin testing for airborne allergens before age 4 or 5 should be reconsidered, so children in this high-risk group can be detected early and monitored for the possibility of later allergic respiratory disease.

Produced by researchers in UC's departments of environmental health and internal medicine and at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, the study is published in the October 2006 edition of The Journal of Pediatrics.

The Cincinnati scientists collected data on 680 children being reviewed for enrollment in the Cincinnati Childhood Allergy and Air Pollution Study (CCAAPS), sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), and compared their results with findings in a 2004 Swedish study.

Using the skin-prick allergy test, the Swedish group observed that in their general population-which included children whose parents did not suffer from allergies-7 percent had allergic sensitivity at age 1. The Swedes tested five allergens, two of which were food allergens.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

October 11, 2006, 5:22 AM CT

Innovative Surgery Corrects Vision

Children with cerebral palsy and other neurological problems often have extremely poor eyesight. Their ability to read, pick up objects and "see" the world is so impaired and complicated to treat that a number of go untreated, even though they may be legally blind.

Janice Brunstrom, M.D., assistant professor of neurology and pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Loius and a neurologist at St. Louis Children's Hospital, saw firsthand how her patients' poor vision interfered with every aspect of their daily lives. Having cerebral palsy herself and wanting to help reverse the isolation that a number of of these children endure because of their poor vision, she approached pediatric ophthalmologist Lawrence Tychsen, M.D., to help devise some solutions.

He did. Tychsen, professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, of pediatrics and of neurobiology and ophthalmologist in chief at St. Louis Children's Hospital, developed specialized testing and now does vision correction, or refractive surgery, on children with cerebral palsy, Down syndrome and neurobehavioral disorders such as autism. To date, St. Louis Children's Hospital is one of the only U.S. medical centers performing refractive surgery on these children and has the highest volume, operating on about 60 special-needs children a year.........

Posted by: Mike      Permalink         Source

October 9, 2006, 10:09 PM CT

Teens And Cigarette Ads

Today alone, more than 4,400 U.S. teenagers will start smoking, as per statistics from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration. A number of of these adolescents will be lured to cigarettes by advertisements and movies that feature sophisticated models and actors, suggesting that smoking is a glamorous, grown-up activity. However, teens who are savvier about the motives and methods of advertisers may be less inclined to take to cigarettes, a University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine study indicates.

Teens with above-average smoking media literacy (SML) are nearly half as likely to smoke as their less media-literate peers, as per the lead study in the current issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health. The results not only suggest that SML training could be an effective intervention to decrease teen smoking, but they also provide some of the first quantitative evidence linking SML to smoking.

"A number of factors that influence a teen's decision to smoke like peer influence, parental smoking and risk-seeking tendency are difficult to change," said the study's lead author, Brian Primack, M.D., Ed.M., assistant professor in the School of Medicine's division of general internal medicine. "However, media literacy, which can be taught, may be a valuable tool in efforts to discourage teens from smoking".........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

October 6, 2006, 4:48 AM CT

Babies With Persistent Pulmonary Hypertension

If he can figure out which babies will be born unable to breathe properly, Dr. Stephen M. Black thinks he can help change that.

"When these kids are born, you have a short amount of time to intervene or you get brain damage," says Dr. Black, cell and molecular physiologist at the Medical College of Georgia Vascular Biology Center.

Unfortunately, persistent pulmonary high blood pressure comes as a surprise in full-term babies, says Dr. Jatinder J.S. Bhatia, chief of the MCG Section of Neonatology. The pregnancy seems uneventful until the hours following birth when breathing trouble requires rapid transport to a neonatal intensive care unit.

"What happens in utero is that all your gas exchange is through the placenta, so there is only about 8 percent of cardiac output actually going through the lungs," says Dr. Black. "When you are born, obviously there is 100 cardiac output and you need to breathe".

When babies can't breathe well, physicians quickly determine whether the primary problem is the heart or lungs, Dr. Bhatia says. When it's the lungs, babies first get oxygen treatment and possibly mechanical ventilation. If it is pulmonary hypertension, the powerful vasodilator, nitric oxide, is used to reduce high pressures in the pulmonary circuit and allow the transition to a normal circulation. Neonatologists also have begun using the popular erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra, to dilate tiny pulmonary vessels.........

Posted by: Emily      Permalink         Source

October 5, 2006, 10:00 PM CT

Brain Mapping Safe For Children

Dispelling a stubborn myth, scientists at Johns Hopkins have shown that children with strokes, brain tumors and other cerebrovascular diseases can safely undergo a potentially life-saving brain-mapping test that a number of doctors have long shunned over concerns for side effects. Analysis of 241 cerebral angiograms performed on 205 children at the Johns Hopkins Children's Center between 1999 and 2006 showed that not a single patient suffered complications during or immediately following the procedure.

Results of the analysis, thought to bethe first study in more than 25 years to look at the safety of cerebral angiographies in children, are published in the recent issue of Stroke.

Performed by threading a catheter into the patient's groin, through the abdomen and the chest and upward into the arteries of the neck, cerebral angiography is the most accurate brain-vessel imaging technique available and a critical diagnostic and therapy tool, says Lori Jordan, M.D., a pediatric neurologist at the Children's Center and a co-author of the report.

"The assumption that angiographies in children are more dangerous than in adults haccording tosisted over the years-mostly due to lack of evidence," says study senior author Philippe Gailloud, M.D., an interventional neuroradiologist at Johns Hopkins. "When we ask parents to sign consent for an angiography, their first question is how safe it is, and up until now, we didn't have any hard data to show them. Given the very low risk of complications we see, pediatric neurologists should not hesitate to order the procedure, and we can say to them that we have research showing this procedure is indeed very safe in children".........

Posted by: Daniel      Permalink         Source

October 4, 2006, 10:31 PM CT

Overweight Children At Increased Risk

Research published recently in Journal of the CardioMetabolic Syndrome (JCMS) presents data supporting that adult diseases, such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and sleep apnea are now recognizable in childhood. The underlying link between them is a disorder of insulin resistance, which is worsened by childhood obesity. The annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention observed that about one-third of U.S. children today, about 25 million, are overweight or at risk of becoming overweight.

One study in this special issue reports data on the effect of age and sex on cardiovascular risk in overweight children, aged 11 years and older. Results showed that hypertension and dyslipidemia in overweight children is high, with overweight males 11 years and older having a higher prevalence of these risk factors than females and younger males. This may explain the earlier appearance of cardiovascular disease in overweight adult males.

Scientists from Wisconsin, lead by Dr. David K. Murdock examined the effect of elevated body mass index in 247 healthy school children of which 28 percent of 2nd graders and 33 percent of 11th graders were overweight. Data from the study revealed that biomarkers of increased risk of adverse cardiovascular outcomes were already present in the overweight children.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source