June 15, 2007, 11:10 AM CT

Childhood Lead Poisonings Continue Downward Trend

Eventhough childhood lead poisoning remains a serious problem, the number of new cases identified in 2006 marks the lowest level in more than a decade. The number of new cases identified in 2006 - 2,310 among children ages 6 months to 6 years - marks a 13% decline from 2005 and an 88% decline since 1995, when nearly 20,000 children were newly identified with lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is defined as a blood-lead level greater than or equal to 10 )g/dL (micrograms per deciliter).

The number of cases is falling even as health care providers expand testing of one- and two-yearold children, as mandatory by State law. In 2006, an estimated 76% of one-year-olds and 65% of twoyear- olds were tested for lead poisoning, as in comparison to 72% and 60%, respectively, in 2005. The Health Department actively promotes blood lead testing among healthcare providers, particularly in high-risk neighborhoods.

"We want to make lead poisoning a thing of the past in New York City," said Nancy Clark, Assistant Commissioner for Environmental Disease Prevention. "Peeling lead paint, especially on doors and windows, is the primary cause of lead poisoning and young children are the most at risk group for lead poisoning. Lead poisoning can cause learning and behavioral problems so it's critical to have your doctor test them at their first and second birthdays"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

June 15, 2007, 11:06 AM CT

Infectious diseases experts issue warnings

New vaccines are available to make significant gains against cervical cancer deaths and debilitating pain from shingles, but infectious diseases experts warn that their full potential will not be realized without changes in the way vaccines for adults and adolescents are promoted, financed, and delivered in the United States.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) has released a new blueprint for action to prevent tens of thousands of deaths and illnesses caused by these and other diseases that can be avoided with a few simple shots. The blueprint is reported in the June 15 issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases.

We have done a great job in this country delivering vaccines to children, but we have done an awful job delivering vaccines to adults, said Neal A. Halsey, MD, professor at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and chair of the IDSA Immunization Work Group that developed the policy blueprint.

For example, he points out that more than 90 percent of U.S. children are immunized against measles, mumps, whooping cough, hepatitis B, and other diseases. Rates of these diseases are at or near historic lows. In contrast, an estimated 175,000 adults are hospitalized and 6,000 die each year from pneumococcal pneumonia, but one in three adults over 65 has not been vaccinated against it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the cost of treating diseases that vaccines could prevent exceeds $10 billion annually......... Posted by: Mark      Read more         Source

June 13, 2007, 7:54 AM CT

Poor sleep hygiene in children

A research abstract that will be presented Wednesday at SLEEP 2007, the 21st Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) finds that a snoring child's poor sleep hygiene habits can have a negative influence on his or her daytime behavior.

Lisa Witcher of the University of Louisville, who authored the study, interviewed the parents of 52 children between the ages of five and eight who were reported to snore "frequently" to "almost always". The children underwent an overnight polysomnography, and parents were asked to complete the Children's Sleep Hygiene Scale (CSHS) and the Conners' Parent Rating Scales-Revised (CPRS-R).

The results showed strong negative correlations between the CSHS overall sleep hygiene score and CPRS-R total externalizing behaviors. The CSHS total was also negatively correlated with the CPRS-R cognitive/inattention problems, hyperactivity, perfectionism, ADHD index, and restless and impulsivity total scores among others. Further, the CSHS physiological, cognitive, emotional, environmental, and bedtime routine subscales were also significantly negatively correlated with externalizing behaviors on the CPRS-R.

"The parental reports indicate poorer sleep hygiene is linked to both internalizing and externalizing behavior problems, specifically those linked to ADHD symptoms," said Witcher. "While no causation can be inferred, an overlap between daytime behavior problems, poor sleep hygiene, and potentially problematic bedtime behaviors in snoring children may exist and deserves further study"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

June 12, 2007, 5:06 AM CT

Antibiotic use in infants linked to asthma

New research indicates that children who receive antibiotics before their first birthday are significantly more likely to develop asthma by age 7. The study, reported in the recent issue of CHEST, the peer-evaluated journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), reports that children receiving antibiotics in the first year of life were at greater risk for developing asthma by age 7 than those not receiving antibiotics. The risk for asthma doubled in children receiving antibiotics for nonrespiratory infections, as well as in children who received multiple antibiotic courses and who did not live with a dog during the first year.

Antibiotics are prescribed mostly for respiratory tract infections, yet respiratory symptoms can be a sign of future asthma. This may make it difficult to attribute antibiotic use to asthma development, said lead study author Anita Kozyrskyj, PhD, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB. Our study reported on antibiotic use in children being treated for nonrespiratory tract infections, which distinguishes the effect of the antibiotic.

By using a prescription database, Dr. Kozyrskyj and his colleagues from the University of Manitoba and McGill University in Montreal were able to monitor the antibiotic use of 13,116 children from birth to age 7, specifically noting antibiotic use during the first year of life and presence of asthma at 7. The reason for antibiotic use was categorized by lower respiratory tract infection (bronchitis, pneumonia), upper respiratory tract infection (otitis media, sinusitis), and nonrespiratory tract infection (urinary infections, impetigo). Risk and protective factors also were noted, including gender, urban or rural location, neighborhood income, number of siblings at age 7, maternal history of asthma, and pets reported living in the home. Within the study group, 6 percent of children had current asthma at age 7, while 65 percent of children had received at least one antibiotic prescription during the first year of life. Of the prescriptions, 40 percent of children received antibiotics for otitis media, 28 percent for other upper respiratory tract infections, 19 percent for lower respiratory tract infections, and 7 percent for non-respiratory tract infections. Results showed that antibiotic use in the first year was significantly linked to greater odds of asthma at age 7. This likelihood increased with the number of antibiotic courses, with children receiving more than four courses of antibiotics having 1.5 times the risk of asthma compared with children not receiving antibiotics. When scientists compared the reason for antibiotic use, their analysis indicated that asthma at age 7 was almost twice as likely in children receiving an antibiotic for nonrespiratory tract infections compared with children who did not receive antibiotics......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

June 10, 2007, 7:33 PM CT

Early identification of at-risk readers

Taken together, functional brain scans and tests of reading skills strongly predict which children will have ongoing reading problems. Whats more, the two methods work better together than either one alone, as per new research in the recent issue of Behavioral Neuroscience, which is published by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Neuroresearchers at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon universities think this double-barreled diagnostic can help identify at-risk readers as early as possible. That way, schools can step in before those children fail to learn to read or develop poor reading habits that might interfere with remediation, such as relying on memory for words rather than sounding out new ones. Early identification and systematic intervention can very often turn likely non-readers into readers, as per the study authors.

This study of 73 Pittsburgh-area children of ages 8 to 12, all identified as struggling readers, ran for a school year. At the start of the year, the scientists administered standard tests of early literacy skills, including word identification, fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, efficiency, and phonological processing this last a critical measure of how well children process the sounds of letters and letter combinations. The scientists also used functional MRIs (fMRIs) to depict how the childrens brains worked when they had to read two words and say whether they rhymed, a test of phonological awareness. To make the fMRI results more sensitive to differences among children, the authors further analyzed the images using a method called voxel-based morphometry that uses the density of the brains white and grey matter to zero in on activation patterns in specific parts of key brain regions......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

June 5, 2007, 0:09 AM CT

Children innately prepared to learn language

To learn a language is to learn a set of all-purpose rules that can be used in an infinite number of ways. A new study shows that by the age of seven months, human infants are on the lookout for abstract rules and that they know the best place to look for such abstractions is in human speech.

In a series of experiments appearing in the recent issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Gary Marcus and co-authors Keith Fernandes and Scott Johnson at New York University exposed infants to algebraically structured sequences that consisted of either speech syllables or non-speech sounds.

Once infants became familiar with these sequences, scientists presented the infants four new unique sequences: Two of these new sequences were consistent with the familiarization grammar, while two were inconsistent. (For example, given familiarization with la ta ta, ge lai lai, consistent test sentences would include wo fe fe and de ko ko (ABB), while inconsistent sentences would include wo wo fe and de de ko (AAB). Marcus and colleagues then measured how long infants attended to each sequence in order to determine whether they recognized the previously learned grammar.

In the first two experiments, the scientists examined infants rule learning using sequences of tones, sung syllables, musical instruments of varying timbres and animal noises......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

May 31, 2007, 11:40 PM CT

Drinking Sugar-Sweetened Beverages between Meals

Research to date has been inconclusive on whether drinking sugar-sweetened beverages between meals increases childrens risk of becoming overweight. Scientists at the University of Ottawa Institute of Population Health say sugar-sweetened drinks can have a negative effect on pre-school children.

The scientists studied the frequency of sugar-sweetened beverage consumption between meals of more than 1,900 children living in Quebec, Canada.

The scientists found nearly 7 percent of children who didnt drink sugar-sweetened beverages between meals between the ages of 2 to 4 were overweight at 4 years old in comparison to 15.4 percent of children who did drink them four to six times or more per week.

Parents should be encouraged to limit the quantity of beverages high in energy and sugar because of their propensity to increase weight, the scientists conclude.

American Dietetic Association Issues Updated Position Statement on Food and Nutrition Professionals Can Implement Practices to Conserve Natural Resources and Support Ecological Sustainability:

ADA is committed to research, policy and programs designed to conserve natural resources and promote ecological sustainability. ADA encourages its members to understand the global implications of their actions, as per an updated ADA position statement published this month:........ Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

May 25, 2007, 7:31 PM CT

Alcohol use during pregnancy

Preterm delivery, and especially "extreme prematurity" defined as less than 32 weeks of gestation are major contributors to perinatal sickness and death worldwide. A new study has observed that maternal alcohol use during pregnancy can contribute to a substantial increase in risk for extreme preterm delivery.

Results are reported in the recent issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research

"Preterm birth has increased in part because of assisted reproductive technology and indicated medical intervention, however, we believed that we could also detect the impact of alcohol," said Robert J. Sokol, distinguished professor of obstetrics and gynecology and Director of the C.S. Mott Center for Human Growth and Development at Wayne State University. "In most prior studies, pregnancy dating was much less certain; but we used ultrasound dating. Its like listening to FM radio, rather than AM radio that has a lot of static; it is easier to hear whats being said with less noise in the background."

Sokol and colleagues collected data on exposure to alcohol, cocaine and cigarettes, as well as corresponding outcomes, from 3,130 pregnant women and their infants. As noted above, the scientists also used ultrasound to provide specific pregnancy dating. Of the newborns, 66 were extremely preterm, 462 were mildly preterm, and 2,602 were term deliveries......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

May 25, 2007, 7:25 PM CT

Babies able to tell through visual cues

At four months, babies can tell whether a speaker has switched to a different language from visual cues alone, as per a University of British Columbia study.

Researcher Whitney Weikum observed that infants are able to discern when a different language is spoken by watching the shapes and rhythm of the speaker's mouth and face movements.

The findings suggest that older infants, raised in a monolingual environment, no longer need this facility. However, babies growing up in a bilingual environment advantageously maintain the discrimination abilities needed for separating and learning multiple languages.

In a paper would be reported in the May 25 issue of the journal Science, Weikum explores whether babies use visual speech information to tell the difference between someone speaking their native language(s) and an unfamiliar language. Weikum is a UBC Neuroscience doctoral student working with Canada Research Chair and Psychology Prof. Janet Werker.

The scientists tested three groups of infants ages four, six and eight months from monolingual English homes and two groups of infants ages six and eight months from bilingual homes. They showed each group silent video clips of three bilingual French-English speakers, who recited sentences first in English or French, and then switched to the other language......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

May 17, 2007, 5:28 AM CT

High-quality child care for poor children

Young adults from low-income families who were in full-time early educational child care from infancy to age 5 report fewer symptoms of depression than their peers who were not in this type of care. The early educational intervention also appears to have protected the children to some extent against the negative effects of their home environments. These findings highlight the value of investing in high quality early childhood experiences for low-income children.

Those are the conclusions of a new study conducted by scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Washington at Seattle. The study is reported in the May/June 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

Research has shown a relationship between poverty in early childhood and an increased risk for mental health problems in adulthood. Many early intervention programs have been found to enhance the cognitive development and academic outcomes of children living in poverty, but less is known about the long-term effects of these programs on children's mental health.

Some 111 children were enrolled as infants in the Abecedarian Project, a North Carolina-based study in which high-risk children were randomly assigned to early educational child care from infancy to age 5; a control group did not receive such care. All children came from low-income families with demographic factors known to predict developmental delays or academic problems; 98 percent were African-American. As part of the study, developmental and demographic data were collected regularly during the early childhood years with follow-up assessments in adolescence and young adulthood......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source