January 3, 2006

Black Baby Girls Better At Surviving Premature Birth

Black baby girls born weighing 2.2 pounds or less are more than twice as likely to survive as white baby boys born at the same weight, when a number of preemies are still too tiny to make it on their own, University of Florida scientists have found.

Analyzing data from more than 5,000 premature births, UF scientists pinpointed a link between gender and race and the survival rates of babies born at extremely low weights, according to findings released recently (Jan. 3) in the journal Pediatrics. It's the first scientific evidence of a phenomenon doctors have observed for years, said Dr. Steven B. Morse, a UF assistant professor of pediatrics and the article's lead author.

Baby girls of both races had the strongest advantage when born weighing less than 1,000 grams, about 2 pounds or as much as a quart of milk, Morse said. Girls had nearly twice the odds of surviving as baby boys did, and black infants also had a slight survival advantage over whites, the research shows. Overall, black baby girls were twice as likely to survive compared with white baby boys, 1.8 times more likely to survive than black boys and 1.3 times more likely to live than white baby girls.

"When you're talking about survival, that's very significant," Morse said. "We have known in general that females tend to have better survival rates than males and blacks better than whites. But quantifying that and finding if there was a statistical significance had yet to be done".

Morse and other scientists from the UF Maternal Child Health Education and Research and Data Center also analyzed the infants' developmental ages and weights at birth, combining these data with race and gender to specify the odds of survival for babies born in each demographic.

Nationwide, nearly a half million babies are born prematurely each year, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Only about 1 percent of all babies born weigh less than 2 pounds, and one of the first questions parents of these infants ask is if their child will live, said Morse, who as a neonatologist works with families every day. Having accurate data can help families and doctors make better decisions at a time when choices can be hard to make, he said.........

JoAnn      Permalink


January 2, 2006, 9:37 PM CT

Clinical Trials Urged For Paediatric Stroke

Scientists at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Stollery Children's Hospital and Chedoke McMaster have advised that randomized clinical trials are urgently needed to equip diagnosing physicians with the most effective therapy options for paediatric stroke. This research is published in the January 2006 issue of the journal Stroke.

"There is a lot of uncertainty for clinicians when identifying the best therapy options for different types of paediatric stroke, as there is little to no evidence from clinical trials to support therapy decisions," said Dr. Gabrielle deVeber, the study's principal investigator, a paediatric neurologist and scientist at SickKids and an associate professor of Paediatrics at the University of Toronto. "By compiling data on the largest number of children with stroke and the clinicians treating them, we were able to identify the most significant therapy issues facing physicians when dealing with paediatric stroke".

From January 1995 to January 1, 2005 physicians worldwide consulted the 1-800-NOCLOTS toll-free paediatric stroke telephone consultation service. The consultation service, run out of SickKids in Toronto , Stollery Children's Hospital in Edmonton and the Children's Hospital at Chedoke McMaster in Hamilton provided telephone support and therapy suggestions to physicians dealing with paediatric stroke. The paediatric neurologists and haematologists operating the line documented caller and patient characteristics, antithrombotic therapys and caller's questions for entry into a computerized database.

"While we were collecting data, physicians were also provided with patient-specific support by a consultation service through the use of an annually updated published paediatric stroke protocol," said Dr. deVeber, who is also director of the Children's Stroke Program at SickKids.........

JoAnn      Permalink


December 26, 2005

March of Dimes New Year's Resolutions for a Healthy Baby

January is Birth Defects Prevention Month and some premature births and birth defects may be avoided with a healthy lifestyle before and during pregnancy. The March of Dimes recommends seven New Year's resolutions to help give babies a healthy start.

   
• Stop smoking and avoid second hand smoke. Smoking may make it harder to get pregnant and can increase the risk of premature birth.


   
• Stop using alcohol and illegal drugs. They can cause lifelong health problems.


   
• Check with your doctor before taking any medication, including herbal products.


   
• Take a multivitamin containing 400 micrograms of folic acid daily previous to conception to help reduce the chance of a birth defect of the brain or spine called neural tube defects. NTDs, such as spina bifida and anencephaly, occur in the first few weeks after conception, often before a woman knows she's pregnant.


   
• Maintain a healthy weight. Being very overweight or underweight can increase the risk of prematurity and birth defects.


   
• Get a preconception checkup and ask your doctor how you can help give a baby 9 months of pregnancy.


   
• Eat healthy -reduce caffeine, avoid fish high in mercury, raw and undercooked meat and unpasteurized juice and dairy products.
........

Emily      Permalink


December 25, 2005, 10:32 AM CT


Merry Christmas To All Our Readers


Medicineworld wishes all our readers merry Christmas.

Oh, jingle bells, jingle bells

Jingle all the way

Oh, what fun it is to ride

In a one horse open sleigh

Jingle bells, jingle bells

Jingle all the way

Oh, what fun it is to ride

In a one horse open sleigh........

Daniel      Permalink


December 22, 2005


Holiday Safety Tips


With the holidays fast approaching, Safe Kids Canada, the national injury prevention program of The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), wants to remind parents and caregivers about some of the dangers at home for children during the holiday season. Here are a few simple precautions you can take to help keep children safe over the holidays: .

Think twice before gathering around the holiday fire.

Gas fireplaces are popular but children can easily burn their hands and fingers from contact with the glass barrier at the front of the gas fireplace. The fireplace glass can heat up to over 200 ° C (400 ° F) in about six minutes and takes an average of 45 minutes for the fireplace to cool to a safe temperature after a burning fire has been extinguished. Burns happen when toddlers fall towards the gas fireplace barrier or touch the glass for balance or out of curiosity. Safety gates should be installed to keep your child at a safe distance at all times. Consider not using the fireplace if you have young children, using it only after your children have gone to sleep, or turn the unit off completely, including the pilot flame, whenever the unit is not in use.

Make sure all holiday lights and electrical cords are in good repair and out of children's reach.

Each year, doctors at SickKids see children who have suffered electrical burns from touching hot bulbs or putting them into their mouths. Others have bitten electrical cords and mandatory plastic surgery.

New TV for Christmas? Be careful where you place it.

Each year, 100 children are injured when TV sets topple on them. In the majority of cases , the television was on a simple stand or cart, while others were on wall units, .

shelving or dressers. To prevent injuries, keep your television on low, sturdy furniture and push it as far back on the furniture as possible. Keep your TV cords behind the furniture, where children cannot reach them. When possible, use anchors, angle-braces, or furniture straps to secure furniture to the wall.........

JoAnn      Permalink


December 20, 2005


Genetic Testing Still Smart Choice


Screening embryos for genetic diseases during in vitro fertilization offers couples the best chance for a healthy child, but a genetic glitch could potentially cause doctors to misdiagnose a small fraction of them, University of Florida scientists say.

Citing concerns about the accuracy of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the method a number of practitioners use to pick the healthiest embryos during IVF, UF scientists set out to study the procedure. Their work, described during a recent meeting of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, reveals the technique is actually highly reliable. But because there is a slim chance a genetic abnormality can cause doctors to misdiagnose embryos, some concerns still need to be addressed, the scientists said.

Preimplantation genetic diagnosis has been used for more than a decade to screen embryos for hereditary diseases such as Down syndrome and other abnormalities. To do this, one cell from an eight-cell embryo is extracted and examined for chromosomal defects.

However, as a number of as half these embryos spawn cells with different genetic information as they divide, giving doctors an inaccurate idea of how the embryo will continue to develop, said Larissa Kovalinskaia, a UF research associate with the College of Medicine's IVF program. While a number of embryos with this abnormality - called chromosomal mosaicism - stop developing early, some go on to be born. Because these embryos' cells contain different sets of chromosomes, doctors cannot always accurately screen them for genetic diseases, Kovalinskaia said.

"As more data were coming out, saying that as a number of as 50 percent of (IVF) embryos were mosaic, we started worrying about the accuracy of preimplantation genetic diagnosis," she said. "When you take one cell, does it represent the entire embryo? What we've shown is that we can rely on PGD".........

Sue      Permalink


December 20, 2005


Neighborhoods May Affect Asthma


Educational level, housing status and other socioeconomic factors are thought to affect the health of people with asthma, but a new study finds that one's neighborhood and surrounding area may also play a significant role, even after taking into account personal economic well-being.

While study findings showed worse health and poorer quality of life among people living in lower-income areas, they also showed poorer lung function among those living in suburbs, where people tended to own newer homes in less densely populated neighborhoods.

The study, conducted by scientists from the University of California, San Francisco, is published in the recent issue of the European Respiratory Journal.

The analysis did not pinpoint exposures that might be linked to these population effects, but most scientists believe water-damaged housing stock, proximity to high traffic flow, industrial pollution, and social environmental stress are key contributors to health problems in poorer neighborhoods. The study raises the possibility that more frequent household pet ownership may be one factor in lower lung function in suburban-related health exposures, eventhough larger backyards with more allergenic plants could be a contributor.

"Our research could be subtitled 'No Man is an Island,'" said Paul Blanc, MD, UCSF professor of occupational and environmental medicine and lead author of the study. "The study findings underscore that asthma is a complex problem that does not simply affect people in isolation."

"Even if individual risk factors such as poor access to medical care can be overcome, different communities have different asthma patterns, and strategies for prevention and therapy must take this into account," he said.

Blanc cites the need for studies to nail down the community-wide physical and social environmental factors that contribute to asthma and poorer respiratory health.........

Sue      Permalink


December 17, 2005


Discovery of Remarkable Developmental Pathway

Image: Courtesy of Bruno Reversade and Edward De Robertis/HHMI at UCLA
Howard Hughes Medical Institute scientists have discovered an important regulatory pathway that enables frog embryos to develop normally even after being split in half - as happens in the development of identical twins.

The scientists said their findings suggest that efforts to apply embryonic stem cells therapeutically to regenerate damaged or diseased tissue may have to overcome similar self-regulatory mechanisms present in stem cells. Such mechanisms might otherwise drive stem cells to attempt to differentiate into embryos with a number of cell types, rather than restricting themselves to a desired single type of tissue.

The researchers, graduate student Bruno Reversade and HHMI investigator Edward M. De Robertis, both at the University of California at Los Angeles, published their findings in the The experiments were conceived in an attempt to learn more about the mechanisms underlying the establishment of a morphogenetic field. This field consists of a gradient of regulatory proteins that aids in organizing the differentiation of embryonic cells and gives an organism its overall shape. Eventhough scientists had known that morphogenetic fields were responsible for the embryo's remarkable resiliency, very little was understood about how they function at the molecular level, said De Robertis.

For their studies, Reversade and De Robertis used early embryos of the African toad Xenopus. Widely used in embryological studies, Xenopus embryos are easy to grow and can be manipulated by tissue transplantation techniques. The scientists studied Xenopus embryos in the blastula stage, which resembles a hollow sphere of a few thousand cells.

The researchers were seeking to understand more about the regulatory role of a family of proteins called bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs). Certain BMPs are known to be key regulators of the dorsoventral (back-to-belly) patterning of embryos. In such patterning, dorsal cells differentiate into neural cells and ventral cells become epidermal cells.........

Sue      Permalink


December 17, 2005


gene for debilitating vitamin B12 disease identified


Researchers at the MUHC and McGill University have identified a gene responsible for a disease that impairs the body's ability to handle vitamin B12 and that may contribute to heart disease, stroke and dementia. The details of the CIHR and March of Dimes funded research are published in this week's issue of Nature Genetics. The research, which began more than 20 years ago, will allow doctors to perform earlier diagnosis, assess 'carriers' of the disease-Combined Methylmalonic aciduria (MMA) and Homocystinuria-and open the door to new and improved therapys for this debilitating disease.

"Eventhough this disease sometimes starts in adolescence or adulthood, we commonly diagnose this rare inability to process vitamin B12 in the first few months of life," says Dr. David Rosenblatt, Chairman of Human Genetics at McGill, Director of Medical Genetics in Medicine at the MUHC, Chief of Medical Genetics at the Jewish General Hospital and lead researcher of the new study. "Babies may have breathing, feeding, visual and developmental difficulties, older patients may develop sudden neurological disease."

Vitamin B12, which is found in all animal products-including dairy, eggs, meat, poultry, and fish-but not in plants, is vital for synthesis of red blood cells and maintenance of the nervous system. Vitamin B12 also helps control homocysteine levels in the human body. Homocysteine control is important because in excess this compound can increase the risk of heart disease, stroke, and dementia.

17 year-old Michael-a typical MMA and Homocystinuria patient-was diagnosed at 6-months of age, and has battled numerous medical challenges as a result of his condition. Michael is developmentally delayed, visually impaired and does not talk; he has suffered seizures since he was three years old, had a stroke by the age of seven and has since developed rheumatoid arthritis and scoliosis. Michael's diagnosis, which led the way to therapy involving injections of vitamin B12, was conducted at Dr. Rosenblatt's laboratory at the MUHC-one of only two centres in the world that perform these tests.........

JoAnn      Permalink


December 16, 2005, 9:15 PM CT


Cause Of Breathing Problems In Rett Syndrome Children

Child with Rett syndrome
A multi-institutional team, led by University of Chicago researchers, has taken a crucial step toward understanding and treating Rett syndrome (RS), a rare and often misdiagnosed neurodevelopmental disorder that affects 1 in 10,000 children, mostly females.

As per a research findings published in the December 14, 2005, issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, the scientists describe in a mouse model for RS the source of erratic breathing, which has important implications for children with RS.

Along with breathing problems, RS causes slowed brain and head growth, mental retardation, seizures, gait abnormalities, and handwringing.

"It is absolutely tragic for the family," said Jan-Marino Ramirez, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at Chicago and lead author of the paper. "It's a progressive disease that shows no mercy".

In order to study the breathing pattern more closely, Ramirez and his team showed that mice with the RS gene exhibit the same behavior as children: They breathe irregularly and stop breathing often.

According to Ramirez, one hypothesis that has dominated the thinking of a number of clinicians is that the erratic breathing is due to cortical problems. "It's as if they want to stop breathing," he said. "Some clinicians went that far to suggest that it could be pleasurable for the child to stop breathing all of the time because they get a euphoric high. Or they do this because they're agitated".

However, the scientists traced the problem not to the cortex but to the breathing center itself--in the medulla. The scientists isolated the breathing center from mutant mice and were able to demonstrate that the same erratic breathing pattern, which is so characteristic for RS, also was expressed in the isolated brain tissue, revealing the breathing center as the source of the problem.........

JoAnn      Permalink