August 11, 2006, 0:15 AM CT

Effect Of Parental Cigarette Use In Children

A new study exploring smoking, heavy drinking and marijuana use across three generations indicates that the children of a parent who uses any of these substances are more likely to smoke, binge drink or use marijuana in adolescence and adulthood. Drug transmission across generations, the study found, was for a general tendency to use these substances rather than to use any one specifically, with the exception of tobacco.

The children of cigarette smokers face an particularly murky future, as per the University of Washington study reported in the current issue of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology.

"If your parents were smokers it is a double whammy because you are more likely to use drugs in general and even more likely to smoke cigarettes," said Karl Hill, a research associate professor at the UW's Social Development Research Group and co-author of the new study. "There is something about tobacco that if parents smoke, their kids are more likely to smoke. It may be that parents who smoke might leave cigarettes around where their children can see and get to them. Parents may not leave marijuana and alcohol around in the same way".

Data from the paper were drawn from two long-term UW studies, the Seattle Social Development Project and the Intergenerational Project, which are tracing youth development and social and antisocial behavior. Participants were recruited from Seattle elementary schools, and 808 students have been followed since 1985. In addition to the participants, who make up generation 2, data were collected from their parents (generation 1) and their children (generation 3).........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

August 10, 2006, 11:56 PM CT

Parental Time And Childhood Obesity

The fight against obesity in children just got a new weapon, thanks to a multi-year study by scientists from Texas A&M University.

The study observed that the amounts and quality of time parents spent with their children has a direct effect on children's rates of obesity, said Dr. Alex McIntosh, lead researcher. McIntosh is professor of sociology with a research appointment from Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture study, "Parental Time, Role Strain and Children's Fat Intake and Obesity-Related Outcomes," was published in June.

In general, scientists found the amount of time a mother spent with her child, her work stress and her income level had a larger impact in lowering the child's risk of obesity than the father's time, work stress and income, McIntosh said.

Furthermore, the more time a mother spends with the child, the less likely that child is to be obese; on the other hand, the more time a father spends with a child, the more likely the child will be obese, he said.

"The impacts were greater for 9- to 11-year-old children than for 13- to 15-year-old children," he added.

As a sociologist, McIntosh has long wondered how parents influence their children's nutritional habits, he said.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

August 9, 2006, 11:39 PM CT

Assessment Of Aggressive Boys' Needs

A decision support system, in form of a checklist with 20 risk- and need factors, complements clinical evaluation of boys between the ages of six and twelve with behavioural problems, as per new research from Karolinska Institutet.

Prolonged aggressive and disruptive behaviour in childhood is a strong risk marker for criminality and mental health problems in adulthood. Early identification of boys with increased risk of problems in the future is therefore important in order to be able to provide specialised initiatives to help them and their families.

Several years ago, help appeared in the form of a checklist called EARL-20B. EARL-20B (Early Assessment Risk List for boys) consists of 20 risk- and need factors, where boys' anti-social behaviour, family, friends and environment are reviewed. Dr. Pia Enebrink, psychology expert and researcher at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, is one of the first to investigate how well EARL-20B works for boys between the ages of six and twelve.

"The results show that EARL-20B is reliable and useful in evaluating different risk factors and that it can help us identify the boys who really need help, and focus on the risks and needs with which they require help" , says Dr. Enebrink.

The investigation followed 76 Swedish boys in outpatient child psychiatry, and EARL-20B was compared with standard clinical assessments. The boys were followed up after 6 months and again after 30 months.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

August 6, 2006, 0:29 AM CT

Reversing Malnutrition

Swollen bellies, orange hair, listlessness and dull eyes - these are the traits of child malnutrition in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and where roughly one of every three children is chronically malnourished.

To try to change that statistic, Patricia A. Wolff, M.D., associate clinical professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, founded Meds & Food for Kids (MFK) in 2004, after she saw that medications and small amounts of the local staples rice, beans and corn weren't enough to nourish children back to health.

MFK works to combat childhood malnutrition and related diseases in northern coastal Cap Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city, by giving Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF) to malnourished children between 6 months and 5 years old. The mixture, known to Haitians as "Medika Mamba," or peanut-butter medicine, is a nutrient-rich mixture of peanuts, sugar, oil, vitamins, minerals and powdered milk. It is distributed in plastic containers for families to feed their children at home and can be stored for several months.

Children start to show visible signs of improvement about 1-2 weeks after receiving the peanut-butter mixture, becoming more active and growing new black hair. One course of the six-week therapy, which can be enough to renourish the child, costs under US$100.........

Posted by: Janet      Permalink         Source

August 4, 2006, 0:24 AM CT

Miscarriage Associated With Age

In a study conducted at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and the New York Psychiatric Institute scientists observed that increasing paternal age is significantly linked to increased rates of spontaneous abortion, a pregnancy loss occurring before twenty weeks of gestation. Results indicate that as the male partner ages there is a steady increase in rate of miscarriage. Women with partners aged 35 or older had nearly three times as a number of miscarriages as compared with women conceiving with men younger than 25 years of age. This finding is independent of the woman's age and not explained by other factors such as diabetes, smoking, or prior spontaneous abortions, and adds to the growing realization of the importance of paternal characteristics for successful reproductive outcome.

"There has been a tremendous amount of research on women, and how their characteristics affect pregnancy outcomes. Of course, women's importance and centrality to pregnancy cannot be overstated. However, researchers seem to have forgotten that men are equal partners in reproduction, and their influence should be studied to the same degree. Our group has focused on men's influence on the health of their offspring, and we have made some fascinating discoveries," said Karine Kleinhaus, MD, MPH currently in Columbia's Department of Psychiatry and first author of the study. "This study shows how a man's age affects the likelihood of miscarriage." .........

Posted by: Emily      Permalink         Source

August 1, 2006, 6:42 AM CT

Human Cytomegalovirus Vaccine

Each year, about 40,000 children are born infected with human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, and about 8,000 of these children suffer permanent disabilities due to the virus almost one an hour. These disabilities can include hearing loss, vision loss, mental disability, a lack of coordination, and seizures. As per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CMV is as common a cause of serious disability as Down syndrome, fetal alcohol syndrome, or neural tube defects.

Because of the dangers posed by the virus to infants, the Institute of Medicine has declared that development of a CMV vaccine should be one of the highest priorities for vaccine makers. Now, in a new study in the August 1 issue of The Journal of Virology, scientists at The Wistar Institute outline an innovative approach that could be used to create such a vaccine.

The Wistar researchers began with the observation that mice harbor a species-specific form of CMV that is unable to sustain an infection in humans and is completely harmless to them. They then asked whether, using recombinant technologies, there might not be a way to shift the mouse-specific virus closer to the human-specific virus to generate a version of the virus able to elicit a protective immune response but not a dangerous infection in humans.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

July 31, 2006, 6:45 AM CT

Interventions Should Start After The First Puff

In this research study, Gervais and his colleagues describe the sequence and timing of 12 milestones (6 correlation to cigarette use and 6 to symptoms of nicotine dependence) among grade 7 students. They observed that symptoms of nicotine dependence can take hold long before regular smoking, even after the first puff in some cases.

This information needs to be incorporated into intervention programs aimed at young smokers.

In a related commentary, Klein discusses the challenges in helping young smokers quit and the need for stronger public health efforts to keep youth from starting in the first place.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

July 26, 2006, 4:49 PM CT

Keeping Babies From Deadly Infections

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved a new test studied at the University of Florida that could lead to better screening for the most common cause of infection in newborn babies.

Passed from mother to child during birth, group B streptococcus can cause sepsis, pneumonia, meningitis, neurological damage and, in a small percentage of newborns, even death.

Eventhough all women are tested for group B streptococcus during pregnancy, current screening methods can leave some babies at risk for contracting an infection from the bacterium. But the new test, which UF scientists studied for several months as part of a clinical trial, allows health-care workers to quickly screen mothers during labor, improving the odds that babies will receive preventive care so they will not be infected during delivery.

"Without any intervention, (group B strep) is the most common cause of early-onset infection in newborns," said Rodney Edwards, M.D., a UF assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology in the College of Medicine who led the clinical trial at UF, one of six sites to study the test. "It can cause sepsis, meningitis and pneumonia. The likelihood of dying if you are a newborn is 5 percent. (With meningitis) even if the baby makes it through the infection there is a chance of cerebral palsy and cognitive delay".........

Posted by: Mark      Permalink         Source

July 25, 2006, 8:17 PM CT

Identical Twins Be Genetically Different

They sleep together, eat together, and most people find it impossible to tell them apart. Identical twins who grow up together share just about everything, including their genes. But sometimes only one twin will have health problems when genetics predicts both of them should.

Researchers at the University of Michigan Medical School are just beginning to understand how two people who are so similar biologically can be so different when it comes to the development of diseases like rheumatoid arthritis.

U-M scientists have discovered three genes that are over-expressed in rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, that were not known to be linked to the disease before. They also observed that non-genetic factors influenced the expression of these genes and that the expression patterns varied between identical twins where only one twin had RA. Results of the U-M study were reported in the recent issue of Arthritis and Rheumatism.

RA is a chronic inflammatory disease that damages joints. RA causes pain, loss of movement, and bone deformities. It affects 2.1 million Americans. There are a number of genetic factors that put people at a high-risk for developing RA, yet only 15 percent of identical twins will both develop it.

Researchers compared gene expression patterns of 11 pairs of monozygotic twins, who shared the same egg and were genetically identical, but only one of them had RA. They found three new genes that were significantly over-expressed in the twin with RA in comparison to the one without the disease. This is the first report for RA that examines gene expression patterns in monozygotic twins.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

July 19, 2006, 10:03 PM CT

Autism: Fewer Neurons For Processing Emotion

For the first time, research has shown that the autistic brain has fewer neurons in an area correlation to emotion and social behavior, as per a new study reported in the July 19 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

This study provides quantitative evidence linking autism to an abnormality of the amygdala, particularly the lateral nucleus-a major emotion-processing area with connections to parts of the brain responsible for higher cognitive functions.

"These new findings, based on cell counting, complement other independent studies that suggest amygdala abnormalities likely contribute significantly to the primary core deficit in social function that defines this disorder," says Emanuel DiCicco-Bloom, MD, professor of pediatric neurology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

Authors Cynthia Schumann, PhD, of the University of California, San Diego, and David Amaral, PhD, director of the M.I.N.D. Institute at the University of California, Davis, counted and measured neurons in the amygdala of nine postmortem autistic male brains and 10 age-matched male postmortem non-autistic brains. Ages ranged from 10 to 44 years old. Unlike prior postmortem studies, the sample excluded brains of individuals with epilepsy or similar disorders linked to cell loss in the amygdala.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source