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Medicineworld.org: Archives of pediatric news blog
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Archives Of Pediatric News Blog From Medicineworld.Org
Daughters Of Indian Immigrants Giving Birth To Small Babies
"Now we see that the daughters of foreign-born women have similar issues," said Packard Children's neonatologist Ashima Madan, MD, "and that the indicators we have traditionally used to predict pregnancy outcomes - maternal educational level and age, and access to early prenatal care, for example - aren't reliable for every population." Madan is the lead author of the research, would be reported in the recent issue of the Journal of Pediatrics. Scientists call the previously identified differences in pregnancy outcomes between Indian and Mexican immigrants the "dual paradox." That's because Mexican women giving birth in the United States are more likely than women from India to have healthy-sized newborns, even though they are less likely to have completed high school or to have initiated prenatal care during the first trimester of their pregnancy. In contrast, newborns of Indian immigrants, most of whom have completed college and begun prenatal care early, are more likely to deliver a low birth weight infant......... Posted by: Emily Permalink Source Juice improves health, No increase Obesity Risk
As per the researchers, the group of 100 percent juice consumers also had equal or lower bodyweights and body mass indexes (BMI) than the non-juice consumers, adding to the scientific evidence which shows that 100 percent juices play a role in a healthful diet and are not associated with overweight. The research is being presented this week at the Experimental Biology 2006 meeting. Using well-established data from the government's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), researcher Victor Fulgoni, Ph.D., examined the impact of 100 percent juice in children's diets on bodyweight and BMI among more than 7,500 children ages 2-18. This analysis of the most recent NHANES database (1999-2002), combined with growth chart data from the Centers for Disease Control and Promotion (CDC), found that juice consumers had significantly lower z-scores for body mass index for their age than non-juice consumers (body mass index is a relative measure taking into consideration body weight and body size and z-scores represent the distance from the mean or average of the total population studied). While there were no differences specifically in BMI between the juice consumers and non-juice consumers for children aged 2-11, there were differences in children aged 12-18 years -- the juice consumers had significantly lower BMIs than those who drank no juice at all......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source New Childhood-onset Epilepsy Disorder And Its Genetic Cause
Epilepsies are a biologically complex group of disorders comprising a number of discrete genetic entities, and the majority of recurrent seizure syndromes remain unexplained. Most, if not all, epileptic disorders can be traced to abnormalities of brain structure or chemistry that alter the electrical activity of nerve cell networks. The children in this study have autistic traits, also believed to be caused by disrupted nerve cell networks. The finding, which is reported in the March 30th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, describes the newly discovered disorder called cortical dysplasia-focal epilepsy syndrome (CDFE) in a group of closely related Old Order Amish children from Pennsylvania. All affected children had relatively normal development until the onset of frequent intractable seizures in early childhood. Thereafter, they developed language regression and additional features of autism, possibly implicating this gene as a cause of autism in the general population. Physicians at the CSC isolated DNA from four of the affected children and their six parents and, in collaboration with TGen, identified a mutation in the gene that codes for a protein called CASPR2......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source Lost Sleep In Teens
The poll data support prior work by three Rhode Island scientists who are at the forefront of sleep research. Prior studies from Brown Medical School, and Lifespan affiliates Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital, have found that adolescents are not getting enough sleep, and suggest that this can lead to many physical and emotional impairments. Mary A. Carskadon, PhD, with Bradley Hospital and Brown Medical School, chaired the National Sleep Foundation poll taskforce and has been a leading authority on teen sleep for more than a decade. Her research on adolescent circadian rhythms indicates that the internal clocks of adolescents undergo maturational changes making them different from those of children or adults. Nevertheless, teens must adhere to increasingly earlier school start times that make it nearly impossible for them to get enough sleep. "Our results show that the adage 'early to bed, early to rise' presents a real challenge for adolescents," says Carskadon, who directs the Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Sleep Laboratory and is a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Kids With Cavities And Overweight
A study of children ages 2-5 who underwent aggressive dental therapy under general anesthesia in the operating room by UB's pediatric dentists at the Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo found that at least a quarter of the patients were over the recommended weight for their age or close to it, unlike their peers who had good teeth. Results of the research were presented at the International Association of Dental Research meeting held March 9-12 in Orlando, Fla. "Previous studies in the 1990s found that children with rampant tooth decay appeared to be underweight, and this was attributed to a failure to thrive," said Hiran Perinpanayagam, D.D.S., Ph.D., an endodontist and assistant professor in UB's School of Dental Medicine and senior author on the study. "In contrast, a more recent study found that the children with tooth decay did not have reduced bodyweight. Given these conflicting results, we thought a more definitive study was needed". Sandra McDougal, D.D.S., pediatric dental resident was first author on the study......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Smokers' Children Carry Higher Levels of Harmful Bacteria
Image courtesy of http://www.globalink.org/
S. pneumoniae often exists in the nose and throat, and children are more likely than adults to carry it. If the bacteria, also called pneumococci, grow out of control, infection can result in minor illnesses like ear infections or lead to more serious diseases like sinusitis, pneumonia and meningitis. Scientists in Israel conducted a surveillance study of more than 200 young children and their mothers. They swabbed the noses and throats of the subjects to determine bacterial carriage rates, and then analyzed the data based on the children's and mothers' exposure to smoking. Seventy-six percent of the children exposed to tobacco smoke carried pneumococci, compared to 60 percent of those not exposed. Exposed children were also more likely than non-exposed children to carry pneumococcal serotypes responsible for most of the invasive S. pneumoniae disease. In the mothers, differences were also noted-32 percent of mothers who smoked carried S. pneumoniae, compared with 15 percent of mothers who were exposed to smoking and 12 percent of mothers not exposed to smoking......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source How Fevers Cause Seizures
These convulsions are "scary and very upsetting to parents," said Robert L. Macdonald, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of Neurology. They've also been something of an enigma, he said. The epilepsy research community has struggled to understand how fever ignites convulsions and how to treat them. Macdonald and colleagues including Jing-Qiong Kang, M.D., Ph.D., research assistant professor of Neurology, have now discovered a molecular mechanism that could explain febrile seizures. The research, published last week in The Journal of Neuroscience, may lead to new approaches for preventing recurrent febrile seizures in vulnerable children. Febrile seizures affect as many as one in 15 children worldwide, generally between the ages of 6 months and 6 years. Most children will suffer no long-term consequences from the convulsions, which tend to be generalized - involving the whole body - but some will go on to develop epilepsy. "It has been very controversial through the years: do you treat febrile seizures or not?" Macdonald said. Several studies have investigated treating children with anti-seizure medications such as phenobarbital or sodium valproate to prevent recurrent febrile seizures, but the studies showed only limited benefit to the approach, Macdonald said......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source children enter schools already overweight
The height, weight, and age of more than 1,500 boys and girls from Chicago's public and Catholic schools were reviewed for the study. Twenty-four percent of the children were defined as "overweight," or having a sex- and age-specific body mass index (BMI) that was higher than ninety-five percent of their peers. This is more than twice the national prevalence of overweight children and three times that of the Midwest region. Sixteen percent were "at risk of overweight," with a BMI between the eighty-fifth and ninety-fourth percentile. "These results indicate an urgent problem facing Chicago children, families, health providers, and schools," the authors state. "Ongoing monitoring of child weight status is warranted."........ Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Benefit of Early Therapy in HIV-infected Infants
Uncertainty over when to start antiretroviral therapy in children infected with HIV from their mothers revolves around balancing the benefits of preventing disease progression and the risks and costs of life-long treatment begun within months of birth. Policies on when to start ART vary across Europe. Up to this point, the effect of age on clinical outcome has been difficult to assess because CD4 cell counts--an immunological indicator of HIV progression--experience considerable age-related variation. However, Marie-Louise Newell, MD, and her colleagues in the European Collaborative Study developed a way to standardize CD4 cell counts in relation to age, and thus better evaluate immune status. They call this age-adjusted CD4 cell count the "z-score." Based on data collected over the past 20 years on infected children born to HIV-1 infected women, the researchers concluded that "children who started their most potent ART between 5 months and 5 years of age were almost 60 percent less likely to attain a 20 percent increase in their CD4 cell count z-score at any time, compared to children who started therapy before 5 months"......... Posted by: Mark Permalink Source Finding and Treating Fetal Heart Defects
"We believe the best care of a child with suspected or known congenital heart disease begins before the child is born," said Piers Barker, M.D. assistant professor of pediatric cardiology at Duke. About 40,000 babies in the U.S. are born with heart defects each year, as per the March of Dimes. Heart defects are among the most common birth defects and are the leading cause of birth defect-related deaths, the organization says. A fetal echocardiogram is similar to an obstetrical ultrasound; both use sound waves to create an image of the fetus. However, fetal echocardiography ultrasound is designed to clearly capture pictures of a tiny, fast beating fetal heart. It is painless and non-invasive. Early diagnosis of congenital heart defects is important because it allows parents and physicians time to prepare for care after the baby is born, Barker said. In most cases, expectant mothers can continue to see their regular obstetrician, he said. "However, if a fetus has complex congenital heart disease, we often recommend the mother deliver at a tertiary care hospital with immediate access to a level III NICU and pediatric cardiothoracic surgeons," Barker said. A NICU is a neonatal intensive care unit......... Posted by: Daniel Permalink Source Older Blog Entries 1 2 3 4
Did you know?
Adolescents who suffer physical injuries are vulnerable to emotional distress in the months following their hospitalization, yet almost 40 percent of hospitalized adolescents interviewed for a new study had no source for the follow-up medical care that could diagnose and treat symptoms of post-traumatic stress. These young trauma survivors are at risk for high levels of post-traumatic stress and depressive symptoms, as well as high levels of alcohol use, according to research by researchers at the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center.
Medicineworld.org: Archives of pediatric news blog
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