June 21, 2006, 7:10 AM CT

Nutrition And Twin Pregnancies

The commonly held view that IVF is the only culprit in the steady increase in the numbers of twins born over the past thirty years was challenged by a scientist speaking at the 22nd annual conference of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Prague, Czech Republic, Wednesday 21 June 2006. Professor Robert Jansen, Medical Director of Sydney IVF, Sydney, Australia, said that his research had shown that improved nutrition, both maternal and in the lab in the case of IVF, had produced better and stronger embryos.

"Over the last 100 years, both in the UK and Australia, there has been an increase in identical twinning through the division of the embryo into two, even without IVF", he said, "and with the move to single embryo transfer with IVF this trend is obviously set to continue." Professor Jansen went on to say that the present rate of identical twinning with IVF is between one-in-a-hundred and one-in-fifty, a little over twice the rate involved when getting pregnant naturally.

Professor Jansen and his team reviewed Australian national birth statistics from 1920 to 2003 to determine the sex of babies at birth among multiple pregnancies. They found that the rate of dizygotic (DZ) twinning - where two embryos are involved and half the twins will be of different sex - was relatively constant from 1920 until the 1960s, but there was then the well-known dramatic increase with the advent of induced ovulation and IVF - reaching 300 in every 1000 IVF conceptions by 2000. Among monozygotic (MZ) twins, caused by embryo division (so all are of like sex), the excess rate of same-sex twins among natural conceptions has risen steadily for the last 80 years. MZ twins were relatively rare among IVF babies in the 1980s - much less than occurs naturally - but then rose in the nineties to reach 14 per 1000 by the year 2000.........

Posted by: Emily      Permalink         Source

June 20, 2006, 8:49 PM CT

Animal Feeding Operations Near Schools

Children who attend school near large-scale livestock farms known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) may be at a higher risk for asthma, as per a new study by University of Iowa researchers.

The study, led by Joel Kline, M.D., professor of internal medicine in the UI Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine, appears in the recent issue of Chest, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (www.chestjournal.org).

"Prior research has shown increased rates of asthma among children living in rural areas of Iowa and the United States," said Kline, who also is deputy director of the Environmental Health Sciences Research Center (EHSRC) in the UI College of Public Health, which helped fund the study. "Given that CAFOs release inflammatory substances that can affect the health of workers at these facilities and the air quality of nearby communities, we were interested in whether there was a correlation between CAFOs and increased rates of asthma among kids in rural areas."

Scientists surveyed the parents of kindergarten through fifth-grade students attending two Iowa elementary schools to compare the prevalence of asthma among students. The "study" school was located a half-mile from a CAFO in northeast Iowa; the "control" school was in east-central Iowa, more than 10 miles away from any CAFO (generally classified as a livestock facility that houses more than 3,500 animals). Sixty-one participants responded from the study school, and 248 participants responded from the control school.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

June 19, 2006, 9:24 PM CT

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Posted by: Janet      Permalink

June 19, 2006, 8:29 PM CT

Newborn Screening Can Cause Parental Stress

Virtually all babies in the U.S. have their heels pricked soon after birth to get a blood sample for genetic testing. These "heel stick" tests identify rare metabolic disorders before they cause irreversible damage, but as more disorders are added to the screening - a number of states now test for 30 or more - false-positive results are on the rise. In the recent issue of Pediatrics, scientists from Children's Hospital Boston report that false-positive results cause considerable parental stress, even when the baby proves negative on retesting, and that the stress could be alleviated by better education for parents and pediatricians.

Psychology expert Susan Waisbren, PhD and Elizabeth Gurian, MS in Children's Division of Genetics interviewed 173 families who had received false-positive screening results and a comparison group of 67 families with normal newborn screening results.

Eventhough mothers in the false-positive group were interviewed at least six months after their child's diagnosis had been ruled out, they reported more worry about their child's future and rated themselves less healthy than mothers in the comparison group. Fifteen percent said their child needed extra parental care, versus 3 percent of mothers in the comparison group. After adjustment for socioeconomic factors, both mothers and fathers in the false-positive group had higher scores on the standardized Parenting Stress Index (PSI); 11 percent of mothers (versus no mothers in the comparison group) scored in the clinical range, in which therapy might be prescribed.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source

June 19, 2006, 8:25 PM CT

Ethnic Disparities In Teen Exercise

A study of 17,000 U.S. adolescents finds that black and Hispanic girls are less physically active than white girls, but that this difference is attributable to the schools they attend: black, white and Hispanic girls attending the same school have no difference in physical activity. In contrast, among boys, blacks and Hispanics were more physically active than whites attending the same schools. The researchers, led by Tracy Richmond, MD, in the Division of Adolescent Medicine at Children's Hospital Boston, report and discuss their findings in the recent issue of Pediatrics.

Richmond and his colleagues carefully analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a school-based study of 7th-to-12th graders.

"Obesity is a growing problem in all adolescents, but it affects racial and ethnic minorities disproportionately," Richmond says. "Since physical activity is one protective factor against obesity that we can influence, we wanted to know whether schools might help determine physical activity levels."

Their key findings are as follows:

• On average, black and Hispanic adolescents had a higher body mass index (BMI) than white adolescents.
• Overall, adolescent girls were less physically active than boys, reporting fewer physical activities per week.
........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source




June 18, 2006, 6:10 PM CT


Delayed Umbilical Cord Clamping Boosts Iron in Infants


Just a two-minute delay in clamping a baby's umbilical cord can boost the child's iron reserves and prevent anemia for months, report nutritionists at the University of California, Davis.

Iron deficiency is a concern for both wealthy and poor nations. It is a problem especially in developing countries, where half of all children become anemic during their first year, putting them at risk of serious developmental problems that may not be reversible, even with iron therapys.

Results of the study, conducted by UC Davis nutrition professor Kathryn Dewey and nutrition graduate student Camila Chaparro at a large obstetrical hospital in Mexico City, will be published June 17 in the British medical journal The Lancet.

"By simply delaying cord clamping for this brief time, we can provide the infant with the extra blood, and the iron it contains, from the placenta," said Dewey, an expert in maternal and infant nutrition. "This is an efficient, low-cost way to intervene at birth without harm to the infant or the mother".

She noted that eventhough iron deficiency is a greater problem in developing countries, it is also a serious issue in industrialized nations like the United States, especially for low-income and minority families and in lower birth-weight infants or babies born to iron-deficient mothers.........

Posted by: Emily      Permalink         Source




June 15, 2006, 11:53 PM CT


Changes To Obesity Guidelines May Harm Children


New guidelines on obesity in the U.S. may end up harming children, says an article in this week's BMJ. And an accompanying article goes on to question the financial links between the organisation promoting these proposals and the pharmaceutical industry. If implemented, the proposals would see a number of more children classified as overweight or obese - and thus eligible for therapy with obesity drugs.

The article outlines how an influential expert committee of the American Medical Association has "tentatively decided" to reclassify obesity definitions. This will result in healthy children being categorized as medically overweight or obese, says the author, and mean that approximately a quarter of toddlers and two fifths of children aged 6-11 in America will be classed as having the disease.

The author of the articles is Ray Moynihan, who has previously written about drug companies promoting an increasing reliance on medications to the public. His report reveals that the U.S. proposals have been greeted with alarm by some senior public health academics who have written to the committee. Dr. Jenny O'Dea from the University of Sydney, for instance, warned that labelling children as overweight or obese can lead to stigmatization, eating problems and avoidance of exercise.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink         Source




June 15, 2006, 10:32 PM CT


Lung Retransplants From Living Donors Improve Survival

Charles Huddleston performs a pediatric lung transplant
A team of scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that using lobes of lungs from living donors improves the chances of short-term survival for children who require a second lung transplant.

Their findings are reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery.

Scientists compared the outcomes of lung retransplants in 39 children from 1991 to 2004, including 13 patients who had lung retransplants using lobes from living donors and 26 patients who received lung retransplants using whole lungs from deceased donors.

Living-donor lung retransplantation involves removing a lower lobe, or about one-third of a lung, from each of two healthy adult donors and transplanting the lobes as replacement lungs into a child.

Established in 1990, the lung transplant program at Washington University School of Medicine and St. Louis Children's Hospital was the first freestanding pediatric lung transplant program in the United States. To date, the Washington University Medical Center haccording toformed the most pediatric lung transplants worldwide.

All children who received lung retransplants also had their initial lung transplants at St. Louis Children's Hospital. The majority of children needed second transplants because of bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome, a progressive decrease of pulmonary function that develops in nearly half of pediatric lung recipients within five years. The remainder had primary graft dysfunction, where the lungs don't work effectively after transplant. Eventhough some patients survive these conditions, in a number of instances, the only therapy is retransplantation.........

Posted by: Scott      Permalink         Source




June 8, 2006, 0:08 AM CT


Laws Don't Stop Kids From Smoking


Laws criminalizing the sale of tobacco to kids might be good PR for politicians, but they have little or no effect of the use of tobacco by minors, a Swiss researcher concludes in a new review article.

The author, Jean-François Etter, Ph.D, of the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Geneva, reviewed all published studies on the subject, most of which were done in the United States, where, since 1992, legislation requires all states to enact and enforce laws prohibiting the sale for tobacco to persons under the age of 18.

"The review showed that laws prohibiting tobacco sales to minors are widespread, but that there is little evidence that they have any impact on smoking rates among youth," said Etter.

States do not enforce the laws, and the federal government does not require states to penalize lawbreakers, as per the review would be reported in the recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Even when laws are followed, the analysis found "no effect of sales prohibitions on tobacco use by minors, at any level of compliance by retailers".

Minors easily find "social" sources - family and friends - to get tobacco products and circumvent the laws, the review found, and the weight of criminalization is being shifted from retailers to underage users of tobacco.........

Posted by: Janet      Permalink         Source




June 7, 2006, 7:02 AM CT


Children And Teens Treated With Antipsychotics Increases


A steadily increasing number of patients younger than age 20 received prescriptions for antipsychotic medications between 1993 and 2002, as per a report reported in the recent issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

Antipsychotics are medications used to treat mental disorders, such as schizophrenia and mania, that may involve loss of contact with reality. Several studies have indicated that prescriptions for these medications have been increasing among children and adolescents, raising concerns among professionals and the public. However, no national data have previously been available, as per background information in the article. Most prescriptions given to children and adolescents are for second-generation antipsychotics, which are not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for pediatric patients.

Mark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H., College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, and his colleagues analyzed data from a national survey of office-based physicians conducted yearly by federal researchers. In addition to recording whether the child or adolescent patient received a prescription for antipsychotics, the doctor or a staff member also logged the patient's age, sex and race or ethnicity; the length of the visit; the physician's specialty and whether the patient received psychotherapy.........

Posted by: JoAnn      Permalink