March 12, 2010, 8:12 AM CT

A new oral treatment for lice

French medical scientists from the AP-HP (Henri Mondor Hospital and Avicenne Hospital) and Inserm (Unit 738 "Models and methods for therapeutic assessment of chronic illnesses" and CIC 202, at Tours) have recently demonstrated the effectiveness of a new molecule in the fight against lice. Faced with the emergence of increasing resistance to conventional therapys by these parasites, this new medicine represents a real therapeutic alternative which is effective in 95% of cases.

This work has been reported in the March 11th edition of The New England Journal (NEJM)

Lice are parasites which infest more than 100 million people worldwide each year. Children between the ages of 3 and 11 years are especially vulnerable because of their social behaviour (games etc.) which is favourable to the propagation of parasites.

Eventhough conventional anti-lice lotions are effective in a a number of cases, an ever increasing resistance to these therapys has been observed. Like a number of parasites, lice have evolved their own strategy for survival in difficult conditions. Through evolution of their genetic inheritance, they have become insensitive to the usual insecticides (malathion and pyrethrin) contained in the lotions. In the case of pyrethrin, mutations in the amino acids involved in the development of the sodium channels, acting at the central nervous system level of the lice, have been identified and are responsible for this resistance......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 25, 2010, 1:58 AM CT

Children can have recurrent strokes

Children can have strokes, and the strokes can recur, commonly within a month, as per pediatric researchers. Unfortunately, the strokes often go unrecognized the first time, and the child does not receive therapy before the recurrence.

Pediatric neurologist Rebecca Ichord, M.D., director of the Pediatric Stroke Program at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, reported today on a study of arterial ischemic stroke in children at the International Stroke Conference 2010 in San Antonio, Texas. The conference was sponsored by the American Stroke Association.

An arterial ischemic stroke results from a blockage or constriction in an artery in or leading to the brain.

Ichord and his colleagues at Children's Hospital followed 90 children with a median age of about 6 years old, treated for stroke between 2003 and 2009. Twelve patients (13 percent) had a recurrent stroke during the study period, most of them within a month of the first stroke. In six of the 12 children with recurrent strokes, no one diagnosed the initial stroke until a recurrent stroke occurred.

"Strokes don't occur only in the elderly," said Ichord. "They can also affect children as young as infants. Our findings reinforce how important it is to diagnose stroke in children as quickly as possible so that medical caregivers can provide emergency therapy and take measures to prevent recurrence"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 8, 2010, 7:41 AM CT

Family meals, adequate sleep and limited TV

A new national study suggests that preschool-aged children are likely to have a lower risk for obesity if they regularly engage in one or more of three specific household routines: eating dinner as a family, getting adequate sleep and limiting their weekday television viewing time.

In a large sample of the U.S. population, the study showed that 4-year-olds living in homes with all three routines had an almost 40 percent lower prevalence of obesity than did children living in homes that practiced none of these routines.

Other studies have linked obesity to the individual behaviors of excessive TV viewing, a lack of sleep and, to a lesser extent, a low frequency of family meals. But this is the first study to assess the combination of all three routines with obesity prevalence in a national sample of preschoolers.

The scientists suggested that adopting these three household routines could be an attractive obesity-prevention strategy for all families with young children, particularly because these routines appears to benefit children's overall development. However, they also cautioned that this study alone does not confirm whether the routines themselves, or some other factor, protect children from obesity.

The study appears online and is scheduled for publication in the recent issue of the journal Pediatrics........ Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 5, 2010, 7:48 AM CT

High sensitivity to stress isn't always bad

Children who are particularly reactive to stress are more vulnerable to adversity and have more behavior and health problems than their peers. But a new longitudinal study suggests that highly reactive children are also more likely to do well when they're raised in supportive environments.

The study, by researchers at the University of British Columbia, the University of California, San Francisco, and the University of California, Berkeley, appears in the January/February 2010 issue of the journal Child Development

"Parents and teachers may find that sensitive children, like orchids, are more challenging to raise and care for, but they can bloom into individuals of exceptional ability and strength when reared in a supportive, nurturing, and encouraging environment," as per Jelena Obradović, an assistant professor in the School of Education at Stanford University (Dr. Obradović was at the University of British Columbia when she led the study).

The scientists looked at 338 kindergarteners, as well as their teachers and families, to determine how family adversity and biological reactivity contribute to healthy development.

They observed that children who had significantly stronger biological reactions to a series of mildly stressful tasks designed to look like challenges in their daily lives were more affected by their family contexts, both bad and good. This means that highly reactive children were more likely to have developmental problems when growing up in adverse, stressful family settings......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

February 1, 2010, 7:41 AM CT

Children with cochlear implants

Children who have cochlear implants (CI) rank their quality of life (QOL) equal to their normally hearing (NH) peers, indicates new research in the February 2010 issue of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery

A cochlear implant is an electronic device that restores partial hearing to the deaf. It is surgically implanted in the inner ear and activated by a device worn outside the ear. Unlike a hearing aid, it does not make sound louder or clearer. Instead, the device bypasses damaged parts of the auditory system and directly stimulates the hearing nerve, allowing deaf or severely hard of hearing individuals to receive sound. The National Institutes of Health estimate that as a number of as 59,000 people worldwide have received cochlear implants, with roughly half of those in the pediatric population.

Previous research has indicated that deaf children feel less socially accepted, experience more difficulty in making friends, and demonstrate greater adjustment problems than their hearing peers. The subsequent success of the multi-channel CI devices that improve speech perception and language development led scientists to look beyond speech and language performance to questions of psycho-social behaviors and adjustment.

This cross-sectional study of 88 families with CI children from 16 U.S. states used a generic QOL questionnaire. The group was then divided by age of the child when they filled out the questionnaire: an 8-11-year-old group and a 12-16-year-old group. Both parents and children were asked to fill out the QOL questionnaire, with the parents assessing their child. The study group was then in comparison to a control group of 1,501 NH children in fourth and eighth grades......... Posted by: Sue      Read more         Source

January 26, 2010, 8:52 AM CT

Childhood obesity and cardiovascular disease risk

By as early as 7 years of age, being obese may raise a child's risk of future heart disease and stroke, even in the absence of other cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure, as per a newly released study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM).

"This newly released study demonstrates that the unhealthy consequences of excess body fat start very early," said Nelly Mauras, MD, of Nemours Children's Clinic in Jacksonville, Florida and senior author of the study. "Our study shows that obesity alone is associated with certain abnormalities in the blood that can predispose individuals to developing cardiovascular disease early in adulthood.

These findings suggest that we need more aggressive interventions for weight control in obese children, even those who do not have the co-morbidities of the metabolic syndrome."

The metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors that raise the risk of developing heart disease, stroke and diabetes. It is being increasingly diagnosed in children as being overweight becomes a greater problem. Eventhough debate exists as to its exact definition, to receive a diagnosis of metabolic syndrome, one must have at least three of the following characteristics: increased waist circumference (abdominal fat), low HDL ("good") cholesterol, high triglycerides (fats in the blood), hypertension and high blood glucose (blood sugar)......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 22, 2010, 8:22 AM CT

Do children need both a mother and a father?

The presumption that children need both a mother and a father is widespread. It has been used by proponents of Proposition 8 to argue against same-sex marriage and to uphold a ban on same-sex adoption.

On the other end of the political spectrum, Barack Obama endorsed the vital role of fathers in a 2008 speech: "Of all the rocks upon which we build our lives, we are reminded today that family is the most important. And we are called to recognize and honor how critical every father is to that foundation".

The lead article in the recent issue of Journal of Marriage and Family challenges the idea that "fatherless" children are necessarily at a disadvantage or that men provide a different, indispensable set of parenting skills than women.

"Significant policy decisions have been swayed by the misconception across party lines that children need both a mother and a father. Yet, there is almost no social science research to support this claim. One problem is that proponents of this view routinely ignore research on same-gender parents," said sociologist Timothy Biblarz of the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

Extending their previous work on gender and family, Biblarz and Judith Stacey of NYU analyzed relevant studies about parenting, including available research on single-mother and single-father households, gay male parents and lesbian parents. "That a child needs a male parent and a female parent is so taken for granted that people are uncritical," Stacey said......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 12, 2010, 8:56 AM CT

ADHD: Disconnect Between Brain Regions

Two brain areas fail to connect when children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder attempt a task that measures attention, as per scientists at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and M.I.N.D. Institute.

"This is the first time that we have direct evidence that this connectivity is missing in ADHD," said Ali Mazaheri, postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain. Mazaheri and colleagues made the discovery by analyzing the brain activity in children with ADHD. The paper appears in the current online issue of the journal Biological Psychiatry.

The scientists measured electrical rhythms from the brains of volunteers, particularly the alpha rhythm. When part of the brain is emitting alpha rhythms, it shows that it is disengaged from the rest of the brain and not receiving or processing information optimally, Mazaheri said.

In the experiments, children with diagnosed ADHD and normal children were given a simple attention test while their brain waves were measured. The test consisted of being shown a red or blue image, or hearing a high or low sound, and having to react by pressing a button. Immediately before the test, the children were shown either a letter "V" to alert them that the test would involve a picture (visual), or an inverted "V" representing the letter "A" to alert them that they would hear a sound (auditory)......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 11, 2010, 7:51 AM CT

Autism is a brain 'connectivity' disorder

Studying a rare disorder known as tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC), scientists at Children's Hospital Boston add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that autism spectrum disorders, which affect 25 to 50 percent of TSC patients, result from a miswiring of connections in the developing brain, leading to improper information flow. The finding may also help explain why a number of people with TSC have seizures and intellectual disabilities. Findings were published online in Nature Neuroscience on January 10.

TSC causes non-malignant tumors throughout the body, including the brain. But patients with TSC may have autism, epilepsy or intellectual disabilities even in the absence of these growths. Now, scientists led by Mustafa Sahin, MD, PhD, of Children's Department of Neurology, provide evidence that mutations in one of the TSC's causative genes, known as TSC2, prevent growing nerve fibers (axons) from finding their proper destinations in the developing brain.

Studying a well-characterized axon route between the eye's retina and the visual area of the brain Sahin and his colleagues showed that when mouse neurons were deficient in TSC2, their axons failed to land in the right places. Further investigation showed that the axons' tips, known as "growth cones," did not respond to navigation cues from a group of molecules called ephrins. "Normally ephrins cause growth cones to collapse in neurons, but in tuberous sclerosis the axons don't heed these repulsive cues, so keep growing," says Sahin, the study's senior investigator......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 6, 2010, 7:49 AM CT

Childhood trauma may cause migraine

Scientists from the American Headache Society's Women's Issues Section Research Consortium observed that occurence rate of childhood maltreatment, particularly emotional abuse and neglect, are prevalent in migraine patients. The study also observed that migraineurs reporting childhood emotional or physical abuse and/or neglect had a significantly higher number of comorbid pain conditions compared with those without a history of maltreatment. Full findings of the study appear in the recent issue of Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, published on behalf of the American Headache Society by Wiley-Blackwell.

As per a report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, state and local child protective services (CPS) investigated 3.2 million reports of child abuse or neglect in 2007. CPS classified 794,000 of these children as victims with 59% classified as child neglect; 4% were emotional abuse; 8% as sexual abuse; and 11% were physical abuse cases. Both population- and clinic-based studies, including the current study, have demonstrated an association between childhood maltreatment and an increased risk of migraine chronification years later.

To conduct this study, Gretchen E. Tietjen, M.D, from the University of Toledo Medical Center, and his colleagues, recruited a cross-sectional survey of headache clinic patients with physician-diagnosed migraine at 11 outpatient headache centers. Childhood maltreatment was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ), a 28-item self-reported quantitative measure of childhood abuse (physical, sexual, and emotional) and neglect (physical and emotional). Self-reported physician-diagnosed history of comorbid pain conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), interstitial cystitis (IC), and arthritis was recorded on the survey......... Posted by: Daniel      Read more         Source

January 4, 2010, 8:14 AM CT

Addictive Effects of Caffeine on Kids

Caffeine is a stimulant drug, eventhough legal, and adults use it widely to perk themselves up: Being "addicted" to caffeine is considered perfectly normal.

But how strong is caffeine's appeal in young people who consume an abundance of soft drinks? What impact does acute and chronic caffeine consumption have on their blood pressure, heart rate and hand tremor?

Furthermore, does consuming caffeinated drinks during adolescence contribute to later use of legal or illicit drugs?.

Jennifer L. Temple, PhD, a neurobiologist, assistant professor of exercise and nutrition sciences at the University at Buffalo and director of its Nutrition and Health Research Laboratory, is looking for answers to these three questions through a 4-year, $800,000 study funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Her paper addressing the first question appears in the December 2009 issue of Behavioural Pharmacology, and is believed to be the first study to show a gender effect in the appeal of caffeinated soda in young people.

Given the effects of caffeine in adults, the scientists expected to see a difference between those who habitually consumed a lot of soft drinks, and those who consumed few. However, results showed that the difference was between boys and girls: The boys in the study worked harder and longer on a computer-based exercise to obtain caffeinated drinks......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

January 3, 2010, 10:47 AM CT

Tell them to go to bed early

A study in the Jan. 1 issue of the journal Sleep observed that adolescents with bedtimes that were set earlier by parents were significantly less likely to suffer from depression and to think about committing suicide, suggesting that earlier bedtimes could have a protective effect by lengthening sleep duration and increasing the likelihood of getting enough sleep.

Results show that adolescents with parental set bedtimes of midnight or later were 24 percent more likely to suffer from depression (odds ratio = 1.24) and 20 percent more likely to have suicidal ideation (OR=1.20) than adolescents with parental set bedtimes of 10 p.m. or earlier. This association was appreciably attenuated by self-reported sleep duration and the perception of getting enough sleep. Adolescents who reported that they commonly sleep for five or fewer hours per night were 71 percent more likely to suffer from depression (OR=1.71) and 48 percent more likely to think about committing suicide (OR=1.48) than those who reported getting eight hours of nightly sleep. Participants who reported that they "commonly get enough sleep" were significantly less likely to suffer from depression (OR=0.35) and suicidal ideation (OR=0.71).

Main author James E. Gangwisch, PhD, assistant professor at Columbia University Medical Center in New York, N.Y., said that the results strengthen the argument that short sleep duration could play a role in the etiology of depression......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 29, 2009, 8:47 AM CT

Exposure to tobacco in childhood

Children regularly exposed to tobacco smoke at home were more likely to develop early emphysema in adulthood. This finding by scientists at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health suggests that the lungs may not recover completely from the effects of early-life exposures to tobacco smoke (ETS). The study is reported in the December 2009 American Journal of Epidemiology

This population-based research is the first to examine the association of childhood ETS with early emphysema by Computerized axial tomography scan in nonsmokers. Approximately half of the participants in this large multiethnic cohort had at least one regular cigarette smoker in their childhood home. Participants with more childhood ETS exposure had more emphysema-like lung pixels; an average of 20% of scan pixels were emphysema-like for those who lived with two or more smokers as a child, compared with 18% for those who lived with one regular smoker, or 17% for those who said that they did not live with a regular inside smoker as a child.

The scientists studied Computerized axial tomography scans of 1,781 non-smokers without clinical cardiovascular disease recruited from six communities in the United States, including northern Manhattan and the Bronx, New York. Those reporting childhood ETS exposure were somewhat younger, with an average age of 61; were more likely to be non- Hispanic white; and less likely to have been born outside the United States. These differences were statistically controlled in the analyses......... Posted by: Scott      Read more         Source

December 23, 2009, 11:03 PM CT

Sleeping Off Childhood?

Are your 11- and 12-year-olds staying up later, then dozing off at school the next day? Parents and educators who notice poor sleeping patterns in their children should take note of new research from Tel Aviv University ? and prepare themselves for bigger changes to come.

Prof. Avi Sadeh of TAU's Department of Psychology suggests that changes in children's sleep patterns are evident just before the onset of physical changes linked to puberty. He counsels parents and educators to make sure that pre-pubescent children get the good, healthy sleep that their growing and changing bodies need.

"It is very important for parents to be aware of the importance of sleep for their developing children and to maintain their supervision throughout the adolescent years," says Sadeh, who reported his research findings in a recent issue of the journal Sleep. "School health education should also provide children with compelling information on how insufficient sleep compromises their well-being, psychological functioning and school achievements".

Every minute counts

Results of the study, supported by the Israel Science Foundation, show that over a two-year period, sleep onset was significantly delayed by an average of 50 minutes in the study subjects, and sleep time was significantly reduced by an average of 37 minutes. Girls also had higher sleep efficiency and reported fewer night wakings than boys. For both, initial levels of sleep predicted an increase in pubertal development over time. This suggests that the neurobehavioral changes linked to puberty appears to be seen earlier in sleep organization than in bodily changes......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 7, 2009, 10:22 PM CT

Fit teenage boys are smarter

In the first study to demonstrate a clear positive association between adolescent fitness and adult cognitive performance, Nancy Pedersen of the University of Southern California and his colleagues in Sweden find that better cardiovascular health among teenage boys correlates to higher scores on a range of intelligence tests and more education and income during the later part of life.

"During early adolescence and adulthood, the central nervous system displays considerable plasticity," said Pedersen, research professor of psychology at the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences. "Yet, the effect of exercise on cognition remains poorly understood".

Pedersen, main author Maria berg of the University of Gothenburg and the research team looked at data for all 1.2 million Swedish men born between 1950 and 1976 who enlisted for required military service at the age of 18.

In every measure of cognitive functioning they analyzed from verbal ability to logical performance to geometric perception to mechanical skills average test scores increased as per aerobic fitness.

However, scores on intelligence tests did not increase along with muscle strength, the scientists found.

"Positive associations with intelligence scores were restricted to cardiovascular fitness, not muscular strength," Pedersen explained, "supporting the notion that aerobic exercise improved cognition through the circulatory system influencing brain plasticity"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 1, 2009, 8:23 AM CT

Dangers of childhood lead exposure

A study using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to evaluate brain function revealed that adults who were exposed to lead as children incur permanent brain injury. The results were presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"What we have found is that no region of the brain is spared from lead exposure," said the study's main author, Kim Cecil, Ph.D., imaging scientist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center and professor of radiology, pediatrics and neuroscience at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. "Distinct areas of the brain are affected differently".

The study is part of a large research project called the Cincinnati Lead Study, a long-term lead exposure study conducted through the Cincinnati Children's Environmental Health Center, a collaborative research group funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The Cincinnati Lead Study followed prenatal and early childhood lead exposure of 376 infants from high-risk areas of Cincinnati between 1979 and 1987. Over the course of the project, the children underwent behavioral testing and 23 blood analyses that yielded a mean blood lead level.

Lead, a common and potent poison found in water, soil and lead-based paint, is particularly toxic to children's rapidly developing nervous systems. Homes built before 1950 are most likely to contain lead-based paint, which can chip and be ingested by children......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 1, 2009, 8:19 AM CT

Overweight children may develop back pain

Being overweight as a child could lead to early degeneration in the spine, as per a research studypresented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).

"This is the first study to show an association between increased body mass index (BMI) and disc abnormalities in children," said the study's main author, Judah G. Burns, M.D., fellow in diagnostic neuroradiology at The Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City.

In this retrospective study, Dr. Burns and his colleagues evaluated MR images of the spines of 188 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 20 who complained of back pain and were imaged at the hospital over a four-year period. Trauma and other conditions that would predispose children to back pain were eliminated from the study.

The images revealed that 98 (52.1 percent) of the patients had some abnormality in the lower, or lumbar, spine. Most of those abnormalities occurred within the discs, which are sponge-like cushions in between the bones of the spine. Disc disease occurs when a bulging or ruptured disc presses on nerves, causing pain or weakness.

"In children, back pain is commonly attributed to muscle spasm or sprain," Dr. Burns said. "It is assumed that disc disease does not occur in children, but my experience says otherwise"......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

December 1, 2009, 8:15 AM CT

Successful weight control strategies

Adolescent obesity is a major public health problem that impacts one out of every three children, resulting in 4-5 million overweight youth in the United States. As per a research findings reported in the December 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, scientists reviewed differences in weight control behaviors, including dietary intake and physical activity, comparing overweight adolescents who lost weight and those who did not in order to better understand which strategies could be most effective.

Research has documented that one of the strongest predictors of adult obesity is adolescent obesity, with 70% of obese adolescents becoming obese adults. Identifying effective weight control strategies for adolescents is important and could help influence interventions for obesity in youth.

Investigators surveyed 130 adolescents, 62 who had been successful in losing weight and 68 who had been unsuccessful. Questioning adolescents and their parents, the authors reviewed weight control strategies, sedentary behaviors, dietary intake, physical activity, weighing frequency and current weight status.

In this pilot study weight control strategies were broken down into four categories. The first, "Healthy Weight Control Behaviors" (HWCB ), included eating less calories, increasing exercise, eating less high fat and junk food, drinking less soda, drinking more water, weighing oneself, eating more fruits and vegetables, and engaging in different kinds of exercise. The second category, "Unhealthy Weight Control Behaviors" (UWCB) included laxatives, vomiting, diuretics, smoking, and fasting. The third category, "Extreme Dietary Changes" (EDC), included use of liquid diet supplements, the Atkins diet, a structured diet, fasting, and increased protein consumption. The fourth category, "Structured Behaviors" (SB), included eating a certain amount of calories, counting calories, recording food intake, and working with a professional......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

November 30, 2009, 8:00 AM CT

Intervention for children with autism

A novel early intervention program for very young children with autism some as young as 18 months is effective for improving IQ, language ability, and social interaction, a comprehensive newly released study has observed.

"This is the first controlled study of an intensive early intervention that is appropriate for children with autism who are less than 2 years of age. Given that the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that all 18- and 24-month-old children be screened for autism, it is crucial that we can offer parents effective therapies for children in this age range," said Geraldine Dawson, Ph.D., chief science officer of Autism Speaks and the study's main author. "By starting as soon as the toddler is diagnosed, we hope to maximize the positive impact of the intervention." .

The study, published online today in the journal Pediatrics, examined an intervention called the Early Start Denver Model, which combines applied behavioral analysis (ABA) teaching methods with developmental 'relationship-based' approaches. This approach was novel because it blended the rigor of ABA with play-based routines that focused on building a relationship with the child. While the youngest children in the study were 18 months old, the intervention is designed to be appropriate for children with autism as young as 12 months of age. Eventhough prior studies have observed that early intervention can be helpful for preschool-aged children, interventions for children who are toddlers are just now being tested. Autism is a lifelong neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by repetitive behaviors and impairment in verbal communication and social interaction. It is reported to affect one in 100 children in the United States......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

November 23, 2009, 8:23 AM CT

High blood pressure and kidney disease

Susan Furth, M.D., Ph.D.

Spot blood pressure readings in children with chronic kidney disease often fail to detect high blood pressure - even during doctor's office visits - increasing a child's risk for serious heart problems, as per research from Johns Hopkins Children's Center and other institutions. A report of the findings appears online in the Journal of American Society of Nephrology.

Scientists compared blood pressure measurements obtained during regular doctor visits to readings obtained via a special device the children wore at home that automatically recorded their blood pressure every 20 minutes.

Of the 198 children in the study, nearly 40 percent had "masked" hypertension, meaning their blood pressure was normal at the doctor's office, but spiked outside of it.

An even more disturbing finding: Children with masked high blood pressure were four times more likely to have a form of hypertension-related heart damage called left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) than children with normal blood pressure, scientists report. LVH is a common consequence of untreated high blood pressure that results in a thickening of the left chamber of the heart and that over time can lead to heart failure and heart rhythm disturbances.

"Taking blood pressure at the doctor's office clearly misses a number of cases of masked hypertension," says Susan Furth, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric nephrologist at Hopkins Children's and one of the study's principal investigators. "This means children with chronic kidney disease should have their blood pressure taken at home several times a day and regularly reported to their doctors." An overnight monitor, like the one used in the study, that automatically takes a child's blood pressure every 20 minutes is great, but some insurance companies won't pay for it, researchers say......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source