September 26, 2007, 8:41 PM CT

Autism symptoms can improve into adulthood

Hallmarks of autism are characteristic behaviors - repetitive motions, problems interacting with others, impaired communication abilities - that occur in widely different combinations and degrees of severity among those who have the condition.

But how those behaviors change as individuals progress through adolescence and adulthood has, until now, never been fully scientifically documented. In a new study, reported in the September Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, scientists have observed that symptoms can improve with age.

"On average, people are getting better," says Paul T. Shattuck, an assistant professor of social work at Washington University in St. Louis who worked on the study as a graduate student and post-doctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Waisman Center and is the first author of the paper. "It is a hopeful finding, but the fact remains that those with severe autism will depend on others for their everyday needs and care for the rest of their lives".

Autism is a widespread condition in the United States, affecting an estimated one in 150 children and an unknown number of adults.

The new publication is part of a groundbreaking longitudinal study of more than 400 adolescents and adults with autism and their families led by Marsha Mailick Seltzer, a Wisconsin professor of social work and the director of the UW-Madison Waisman Center. "This project is one of the largest long-term studies of autism and it represents the collaborations of a team of scientists who together are investigating how autism changes across the life course," Seltzer explains......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 25, 2007, 8:41 PM CT

Children obese due to many unhealthy pressures

Unhealthy options and pressures influence nearly every part of children's daily lives, as per studies released this week in a special supplement of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.

The national studies, which include work conducted at the University of Michigan, reveal that, in most middle and high schools across the nation, contracts with soft drink bottling companies give students easy access to sugary beverages.

Low- versus high-income neighborhoods have a higher proportion of their restaurants serving fast foods and have fewer supermarkets and more convenience stores at which to buy their groceries. In the media, television advertisements steer kids to spend their money on junk food, and minority students get considerably more such exposure, the studies showed.

For the special supplement, Bridging the Gap, a national research program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and based at U-M and the University of Illinois at Chicago, produced a groundbreaking collection of evidence on factors that contribute to the escalating rates of childhood obesity.

The studies offer new insight about how current school policies, neighborhood characteristics and advertising collectively impact the childhood obesity epidemic-and together create an overwhelmingly unhealthy environment for young people......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 23, 2007, 11:05 AM CT

Struggles of children with language impairments

For the first time, a new study has looked into how language impairments affect a childs ability to understand and retell a script-based story.

When we experience an event frequently, for example going to a restaurant, we remember the kinds of activities that are part of that event. This is called a script and a number of scientists think that we store information in our brain as scripts. So if you are listening to a story that takes place at a restaurant and you have been to a restaurant before, you would expect characters in the story to order food, eat food, and pay for their meal.

But how do you understand the story when you dont even know the scripts?

For this study, involving a University of Alberta researcher, the examiner read a script-based story (about two children who go to a restaurant with their mother) to 44 eight-year-old children with and without language impairments. Once the story was finished, the children were asked to tell the story back to the examiner. The children with language impairments faired very poorly when trying to recall story details.

It was observed that the children with language impairments often were only able to retell one key piece of information correlation to the story, a very surprising result as research on children without language impairments shows children as young as three-years-old can comprehend and retell basic scripts......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 20, 2007, 11:57 PM CT

Pregnancy, Corticosteroid injections and cerebral palsy

When pregnant women are at high risk for preterm birth, giving them a single injection of corticosteroids has been shown to reduce the babys chances of having serious lung problems after birth.

But some women receive multiple injections of corticosteroids, and a new study shows that repeat courses of corticosteroids are associated with an increased rate of cerebral palsy among children of these mothers.

Our study shows that you get almost all of the benefit from a single round of treatment and that multiple rounds raise the risk of cerebral palsy, which is a severely disabling condition, said John M. Thorp, M.D., a co-author of study and McAllister distinguished professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.

Thats why we concluded that exposure to repeat courses should be limited, Thorp said.

The study results are reported in the Sept. 20, 2007, issue of the New England Journal (NEJM). The lead author is Ronald J. Wapner, M.D., of Drexel University in Philadelphia. The study was conducted for the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which provided grant funding. Research took place at 14 sites across the United States, including UNC-Chapel Hill......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

September 18, 2007, 10:14 PM CT

Medication for ADHD may help student outcomes

In an 18-year-study on attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Mayo Clinic scientists observed that therapy with prescription stimulants is linked to improved long-term academic success of children with ADHD. The Mayo Clinic results are the first population-based data to show stimulant drug treatment helps improve long-term school outcomes.

A related Mayo Clinic study reveals that in comparison to children without AD/HD, children with ADHD are at risk for poor long-term school outcomes such as low achievement in reading, absenteeism, repeating a grade, and dropping out of school. Both studies appear in the current edition of the Journal of Development & Behavioral Pediatrics, (http://www.jrnldbp.com).

Nearly 2 million children, or approximately 3 percent to 5 percent of young children in the United States, have ADHD. This disorder affects a childs ability to focus, concentrate and control impulsive behavior (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/adhd.cfm). This disorder is so common that most school classrooms have at least one child with clinically-diagnosed ADHD.

In this study, therapy with stimulant medicine during childhood was linked to more favorable long-term school outcomes, explains William Barbaresi, M.D., Mayo Clinic pediatrician and lead author of the reports......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 17, 2007, 5:13 AM CT

Divorce foretells child's future care for elderly parent

For better or worse, baby boomers approach retirement with more complex marital histories than prior generations. Temple University researcher Adam Davey, Ph.D. has found the impact of these events -- divorces, widowhood, and remarriage can predict if a child will provide more involved care in the future.

A divorce may have happened over 30 years ago, but the changes it caused can have a long lasting effect for the child into adulthood, Davey said. The findings are reported in the recent issue of Advances in Life Course Research.

More specifically, divorce predicted an adult child would be less of involved with day-to-day assistance during the later part of life for the aging parent. These activities include the child helping the parent maintain chores in the home.

Its not the divorce itself that affects the quality of the parent-child relationship, but its what happens afterwards such as geographical separation, said Davey, a gerontologist who studies trends in the baby boomer generation and other aging issues.

Davey analyzed data from 2,087 parents, aged 50 and older, who reported on their 7,019 adult children in the National Survey of Family and Households. Information was collected between 1987 and 1994.

Marital transitions affect families in many ways, Davey said. They can interrupt the relationship of support between a parent and child, and the evidence suggests that the continuity of support by parents and to parents matters......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 14, 2007, 5:18 AM CT

Less than 3 percent of UK 11-year-olds take enough exercise

Less than 3 per cent of UK 11 year olds are taking enough exercise, suggests research published ahead of print in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

It is recommended that kids spend at least an hour a day doing some form of moderate to vigorous physical activity, in a bid to promote good health and stave off the risks of subsequent obesity and diabetes.

The scientists monitored the physical activity levels of more than 5,500 11 year olds in the South West of England over seven consecutive days between January 2003 and January 2005.

The children were part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), which has tracked the health of more than 14,000 children since birth.

Each child was kitted out with a special piece of equipment (accelerometer), worn on an elasticated belt, which recorded minute by minute the intensity and frequency of physical activity.

The scientists were especially interested in total levels of physical activity and the amount of moderate to vigorous exercise the kids were taking daily.

When the data were analysed, they showed that the children were around twice as physically active as adults, but they were not yet active enough.

Boys were more physically active than girls, and they were also more likely to engage in moderate to vigorous forms of activity......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 11, 2007, 11:32 PM CT

Breastfeeding does not protect against asthma, allergies

Breastfeeding does not protect children against developing asthma or allergies, says a new study led by McGill University's Dr. Michael Kramer and funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). The findings were pre-published online September 11 by the British Medical Journal.

Dr. Kramer James McGill Professor of Pediatrics, Epidemiology and Biostatistics at McGill University and Scientific Director of CIHR's Institute of Human Development, Child and Youth Health and colleagues followed 13,889 children who had been selected at birth from 31 Belarussian maternity hospitals in the randomized Promotion of the Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT). The follow-up took place from December 2002 to April 2005, when the children were 6 years old.

In the survey, a control group of maternity hospitals and affiliated polyclinics was randomized to continue their traditional practices, while those in the experimental group were trained to teach better breastfeeding techniques and to encourage mothers to breastfeed as long and as exclusively as possible. At the end of the trial, the scientists concluded that breastfeeding does not provide any protection against asthma or allergies. "We found, not only was there no protective effect," said Dr. Kramer, "but the results even suggested an increased risk of positive allergic skin tests"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 11, 2007, 11:28 PM CT

Children who learn heart healthy eating habits

A new study in a mid-August edition of Circulation: Journal of the America Heart Association confirms that when young children learn about heart healthy eating habits, it can strongly influence their heart disease risk during the later part of life.

Results from the Turku Coronary Risk Factor Intervention Project have landmark implications on how children should be taught to eat. In this study, a childs fat intake, primarily reduction in intake of saturated fat, was found to be one of the greatest influencing factors, as per the research.

The publication of this study is timely since September 2007 is National Cholesterol Education Month, sponsored by the U.S. National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes National Cholesterol Education Program.

Harri Niinikoski, M.D, Ph.D, lead author and a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of Turku in Finland, says: The aim of the diet counseling in our study was not to reduce the total number of fat calories in the diet, but to shift the childs intake from saturated toward unsaturated fats and have cholesterol intakes of less than 200 mg (such as the use of more vegetable oils than animal fats and butter.) .

Key dietary changes in the intervention families included: 1) using soft margarine and liquid oils instead of butter to maintain adequate fat intake while lowering consumption of saturated fat and cholesterol, and 2) appropriate adjustments to the type of milk consumed by the children......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

September 10, 2007, 9:43 PM CT

A key discovery for Fragile X Syndrome

An important finding has been made by McMaster scientists about Fragile X Syndrome (FXS), a sex-linked genetic disorder that affects approximately one in 4,000 males and one in 6,000 females.

FXS is the most common genetic disorder linked to mental impairment. The affected gene (FMR1) leads to inactivation of the FMR1 gene product, known as the fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP).

Brain development in the absence of this protein leads to cognitive effects, learning and memory problems, attention deficit, hyperactivity and autistic behaviors. A number of children go undiagnosed with Fragile X.

Eventhough the exact functions of FMRP in the brain are unresolved, there is compelling evidence that FMRP is important for normal function at the sites of communication between cells or neurons in the brain. Until now, FMRP was believed to be found only in neurons.

Stem cells are candidates for cell treatment in neurological disorders since they are capable of producing all cell types in the nervous system.

When studying the development of adult stem cells from the mouse brain, Laura Pacey, a Ph.D. student in professor Laurie Doerings laboratory, realized that cells, in addition to neurons, were also producing the FMRP. Doering is an associate professor in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source