| |
|
|
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
Medicineworld.org: Archives of pediatric news blog
Go Back to the main pediatric news blog Subscribe To Health Blog RSS Feed 
Archives Of Pediatric News Blog From Medicineworld.Org
Exposure to pollutants may affect immunity
The study looked at two groups of children in the Faroe Islands, which are located in the North Atlantic and where traditional diets may include whale blubber contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Blood and milk samples taken during pregnancy from the mothers were analyzed to determine the children's prenatal PCB exposure. After routine childhood vaccinations against tetanus and diphtheria, the two groups of children were examined at age 18 months and 7 years, and blood samples were examined for tetanus and diphtheria antibodies. The findings showed an association between increased PCB contamination and lowered antibody response to the vaccines. At 18 months, the diphtheria antibody concentration decreased by 24 percent for each doubling of the PCB exposure. At 7 years, the tetanus antibody response showed the strongest response and decreased by 16 percent for each doubling of the prenatal exposure. "Our study raises concern that exposure to PCB and similar compounds may make childhood vaccinations less efficient," said Philippe Grandjean , adjunct professor at Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the paper. Exposed children may also be more susceptible to infections in general, he said......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Insulin Resistance May Predict Diabetes
The finding indicates that the prevalence of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk factors and type 2 diabetes (both of which are correlation to obesity and are increasing as today's children reach adulthood) also are correlation to insulin resistance independent from obesity, said Alan R. Sinaiko, M.D., lead author of the study and professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School in Minneapolis. After screening blood pressure, height and weight in more than 12,000 5th through 8th grade students in Minneapolis public schools, 357 students (average age 13) were recruited for the study. Two-hundred twenty-four participants completed the study. The participants were 58 percent male and 83 percent white. At baseline the children underwent a complete physical examination including measurements of blood pressure, height, weight, percentage of body fat, high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides and fasting insulin levels. The students were also categorized by stage of sexual development. Sinaiko and his colleagues tracked insulin resistance with a series of insulin clamp studies first at age 13, then 15 and again at 19......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Many Teens Injured On The Job
"The findings from this study clearly indicate that work-related injuries among youth are a significant health problem," report Kristina M. Zierold, Ph.D., assistant professor of family and community medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and Henry A. Anderson, M.D., chief medical officer of the Wisconsin Division of Public Health. Writing in the American Journal of Health Behavior, the authors report that 150 of the teens were injured severely enough that activities at home, work, or school were affected for more than three days, and 97 filed for workers' compensation. The study, funded by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, was conducted in Wisconsin while Zierold was an epidemic intelligence service officer with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Developing programs and strategies to reduce injury must be made a priority," Zierold said. But training on the job where safety could be stressed often is given by another employee. "This type of training commonly consists of explaining how to do the work and how to work the equipment, without emphasis on safety issues," Zierold said. "In other instances, no training is given at all"......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Ozone forecaster unveiled
With the intent to not only increase public awareness, but also help Texas manage air quality issues, the Institute for Multi-dimensional Air Quality Studies (IMAQS) at UH has been operating an air quality forecasting system for a year that has been tested, fine-tuned and now determined ready for public use. Over the course of this past year, the system has been expanded and improved to serve the entire eastern half of Texas, including the Houston and Dallas metropolitan areas. "Our ozone forecaster is more localized than others and goes into further detail," said Daewon Byun, director of IMAQS and a professor in UH's geosciences department. "For instance, while the ozone conditions may be rated unhealthy in downtown Houston on a given day, suburbs like Sugar Land and The Woodlands may actually be experiencing a good day that still is safe for outdoor activities in those specific areas. Other days, the opposite is true with downtown-area ozone levels being lower than in certain suburbs." . By clicking on the local, regional or national maps at http://www.imaqs.uh.edu/ozone_forecast.htm, the public can obtain a map view of daily maximum ozone levels color-coded with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) health alert index. Also included are links to animations of a two-day forecast in one-hour increments. These maps and animations can help individuals, particularly those with respiratory problems, plan their day's outside activities. The Web site is updated daily with the most recent 48-hour local, regional and national forecasts, providing graphical analysis of the onset, intensity, duration and area of poor air quality conditions via access to hourly data from 165 East Texas air pollution monitors. The near real-time hourly air pollution and meteorological data, air quality indices and animations from 3-D simulations performed by IMAQS use the EPA's Community Multiscale Air Quality modeling system co-developed by Byun in 1999 while at the EPA before coming to UH......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Anxiety before surgery complicates recovery in children
The study is important, said lead author, Zeev Kain, M.D., professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology, Pediatrics, and the Yale Child Study Center, because more than five million children in the United States undergo surgery every year and up to 45 percent experience significant stress and anxiety previous to surgery. In his five-year study supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Kain and his team recruited 241 children aged five- to 12-years-old who were scheduled to undergo elective tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. The personality characteristics of the children and their parents were assessed before the surgery. All of the children were admitted to a research unit at Yale following the surgery and postoperative pain and analgesic consumption were recorded every hour. After 24 hours in the hospital, the children were discharged and followed up at home for the next 14 days. The scientists observed that anxious children experienced more problems emerging from anesthesia and significantly more pain both during the hospital stay and over the first three days at home. During home recovery anxious children also consumed significantly more codeine and acetaminophen and had a higher occurence rate of postoperative anxiety and sleep problems......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source TV is an effective 'painkiller' for kids
The research team assessed 69 children between the ages of 7 and 12, who were randomly divided into three groups to have a blood sample taken. One group was given no distraction while the sample was being taken. In the second group mothers attempted to actively distract their children by talking to them, soothing, and/or caressing them. And in the third group, the children were allowed to watch TV cartoons while the procedure was being carried out. None of the children was given any form of anaesthesia, and after the samples had been taken, all the children and their mothers then rated their pain scores. The children recording the highest pain scores were in the group for whom no distraction had been provided. These scores were around three times as high as those recorded by children allowed to watch the TV cartoons. Middling scores were recorded by those children whose mothers had attempted to actively distract them while the sample was taken. Eventhough on average, the mothers rated pain scores higher than their children had done, and especially for their own attempts at distracting their offspring, they nevertheless recorded the lowest pain scores for children who had been allowed to watch TV cartoons......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source MRI Can Predict Developmental Delays
Terrie E. Inder, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics, of radiology and of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and pediatric scientists in New Zealand and Australia observed that the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans were able to determine abnormalities in the white matter and gray matter of the brains of very pre-term infants, those born at 30 weeks or less. Following the infants from birth to age 2, the scientists were able to grade those abnormalities to predict the risk of severe cognitive delays, psychomotor delays, cerebral palsy, or hearing or visual impairments that may be visible by age 2. The results of the study appear in the Aug. 17 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The scientists studied 167 preterm infants in New Zealand and Australia and at St. Louis Children's Hospital. Inder said the findings are a breakthrough because prior technology -- cranial ultrasounds -- did not show the abnormalities in the infants' brains. "With the MRI, now we can understand what's going wrong in the developing brain when the baby is born early," Inder said. "We can use the MRI when the baby reaches full-term (40 weeks) to predict neurodevelopmental outcomes." More than 2 percent of all live births are infants born before 32 weeks of gestation. Nationwide, the rate of premature births jumped 13 percent between 1992 and 2002, as per the March of Dimes. Recent data show that 50 percent of children born prematurely suffer some neurodevelopmental challenges, such as crawling, walking upright, running, swinging arms, and other activities that require coordination and balance. Among pre-term infants who survive, 5 percent to 15 percent have cerebral palsy, severe vision or hearing impairment or both, and 25 percent to 50 percent have cognitive, behavioral and social difficulties that require special educational resources......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Some video games promote sociability
Scientists have observed that some of the large and hugely popular online video games eventhough condemned by a number of as time-gobbling, people-isolating. monsters actually have socially redeeming qualities. In theory, anyway. After examining the form and function of what's known in the trade as. MMOs massively multiplayer online video games an interdisciplinary team of. scientists concludes that some games "promote sociability and new worldviews." The researchers, Constance Steinkuehler and Dmitri Williams, claim that MMOs function not like solitary dungeon cells, but more like virtual coffee shops or pubs where something called "social bridging" takes place. They even liken playing such games as "Asheron's Call" and "Lineage" to dropping in at "Cheers," the fictional TV bar "where everybody knows your name." "By providing places for social interaction and relationships beyond the workplace and home, MMOs have the capacity to function much like the hangouts of old," they said. And they take it one step further by suggesting that the lack of real-world hangouts "is what is driving the MMO phenomenon" in the first place......... Posted by: Janet Permalink Source Kids with OCD bullied
"One of the things we have noticed working with a number of kids with OCD is that peer relations are extremely impaired," said Eric Storch, Ph.D, a UF assistant professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and lead author of the study. "Kids target kids who are different. Kids with OCD sometimes exhibit behaviors that peers simply don't understand". More than one-quarter of the children with OCD who scientists studied reported chronic bullying as a problem, as per findings described in the recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology. By comparison, only 9 percent of kids in the two other groups scientists studied - healthy kids without medical or mental conditions and children with type 1 diabetes - reported serious problems with bullies. Nearly all children are bullied at least once in their lives. But chronic bullying equates to about one taunt per day, ranging from kicking or hitting to name-calling or excluding children from activities in school. "The kids with OCD are really experiencing higher rates of peer problems than other kids," Storch said. "We're not saying one causes the other, but there is a positive relationship between (OCD and bullying)"......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Almost Half Of Kids With ADHD Not Treated
A large number of children who could benefit from ADHD medications don't get them.
"What we found was somewhat surprising," says Richard D. Todd, M.D., Ph.D., the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of genetics. "Only about 58 percent of boys and about 45 percent of girls who had a diagnosis of full-scale ADHD got any medicine at all." Much has been written about the increasing number of children taking drugs for ADHD. One study observed that the percentage of elementary school children taking medicine for ADHD more than tripled, rising from 0.6 percent in 1975 to 3 percent by 1987. Another study reported that the number of adolescents taking ADHD drugs increased 2.5 fold between 1990 and 1995. And a number of reports have noted a rapid increase in the U.S. manufacture of the stimulant drug methylphenidate - commonly sold under the brand names Ritalin or Concerta. The scientists studied 1,610 twins between the ages of 7 and 17. Of those, 359 met full criteria for ADHD: 302 boys and 57 girls. The total number of boys in the sample was 1,006, and 604 girls were included......... Posted by: JoAnn Permalink Source Older Blog Entries 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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
Copyright statement The contents of this web page are protected. Legal action may follow for reproduction of materials without permission. |
