Children’s Health

New York City Investigates Measles Outbreak

New York City health officials said Friday they are investigating an outbreak of measles that’s made at least 16 people sick.

It might be part of a bigger national outbreak linked to the Philippines.

Health officials are quick to declare concern when they see someone with measles, which is one of the most contagious human diseases. Although it was once seen as a normal childhood infection, it’s easily prevented with a vaccine. And it should be, because fully a third of patients develop complications from the virus, including pneumonia, miscarriage and brain inflammation that can put patients into the hospital or even kill them.

About 90 percent of unvaccinated people will get infected if they’re exposed to it.

New York health officials say four infected children were too young to have been vaccinated and that parents had opted not to have two others vaccinated.

Measles was considered eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, but the nation has seen a recent uptick in cases caused by unvaccinated travelers who become infected abroad. Last year, at least 175 cases of measles were reported in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

California has also been reporting an outbreak. As of last month, California health officials have counted 15 cases of measles in six counties.

They declared an alert when an infected college student used the San Francisco area public transit system, and he was later shown to have infected two male relatives.

Measles is a highly contagious virus that spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes. Most people in the U.S. are either naturally immune to measles from having been infected or have been vaccinated against it.

The CDC said earlier this week they had tracked 54 cases of measles in the U.S. so far this year, including a dozen in people who had recently traveled to the Philippines.

Source: NBC news

Premature babies may be disadvantaged later in life

Children born prematurely may be disadvantaged for the rest of their lives by poor understanding of their needs, according to experts.

Paediatricians’ research has shown premature babies are more likely to have difficulties at school but few teachers are aware of this. The number of children born prematurely is rising because women are having babies later in life.

Researchers say the education system should adapt to reflect this change. They are calling for a child’s gestation to be recorded on their education records as a way of flagging up any problems.

‘Greater risk’
“We know from a Scottish study that the earlier you are born the more likely you are to have have problems at school”, said Glasgow paediatrician Dr Nashwa Matta.

“But these children may still be clever and the problems don’t appear until the workload increases at primary or secondary school.” Children born prematurely are more likely to be emotionally immature, lonely and at greater risk of bullying.

They ma y have visual perception issues, including difficulties with numbers and mathematics. Further traits of prematurely born children may include short memories, attention spans and problems with multi-tasking.

Some premature children are also disadvantaged if they are born at the end of the school year because they are effectively sent to school a year early. If they had been born full term they would have gone to school the following year. Around 4,000 babies are born prematurely every year in Scotland.

‘Behavioural issues’
Dr Matta has organised a one-day conference to highlight the issue at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow.

“The simplest thing to do is to put child’s gestation on their school entry form,” said Dr Matta. Then, when a teacher has a child with difficulty with attention, certain work, and memory then they will know he’s born prematurely and can find out what can be done so gap doesn’t get bigger.”

Three-year-old Findlay Masterton was born three months early. His mum Lorraine is worried he won’t be able to cope when he goes to school. “He has behavioural issues, there’s a strict regime of how he likes things done,” she said.

She added: “Findlay has different wee issues that a kid born full term wouldn’t have and I think these might show up when he goes to school next year.

“There’s nothing stated for schools that they have to do anything about this or give them extra time for their lessons. “Schools recognise medical problems, but pre-term? I don’t think it’s taken seriously enough.”

The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) backed the call for tailored support for children with additional support needs.

An EIS spokesperson said: “Teachers and other education professionals working in our schools are aware of the broad range of additional support that is sometimes needed to allow all children to benefit fully from their education.

“There is a requirement for continuing investment in adequate ASN resources in all schools, and for teachers and other professionals to have access to ongoing professional development to ensure that they can continue meeting the particular needs of all pupils.”

Source: BBC news

Metallic toys may harm your kid’s health

Dazzling metallic toys attract your kids in no time but they may end up harming their health and have irreversible effects on their intellectual development, a new study has found.

This is because metallic toys and low-cost jewellery often contain toxic substances such as lead and cadmium.

As babies and young children often put the things they play with in their mouth, they may inadvertently swallow some of these toxic substances too.

The study shows that these metals can be mobilised into digestive fluids once contaminated items are swallowed.

“We observed that cadmium and lead contamination, both very toxic metals, are a major problem, especially when it comes to metallic jewellery and toys. Copper, nickel, arsenic and antimony were also present in some samples,” said Gerald J. Zagury, a professor at the Polytechnique Montreal in Canada.

The researchers examined metal contamination in a selection of 72 toys and jewellery items purchased in the North American market.

They then conducted tests on 24 samples by recreating the biochemical conditions of the gastrointestinal system in the lab in order to get an accurate answer.

The researchers also observed that cadmium, lead and nickel in some samples exceeded the safety threshold levels that a child can be exposed to without suffering acute harmful effects like abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.

The study appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Source: Business standard

Passive smoking causes irreversible damage to kids’ arteries

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Exposure to second-hand smoke in childhood causes irreversible damage to children’s arteries – increasing their risk of heart attacks or strokes when they grow up, according to a large international study published on Wednesday.

The research, which lends weight to campaigns for smoking to be banned in private cars and homes, found passive smoking leads to a thickening of children’s artery walls, adding some 3.3 years to the age of blood vessels by adulthood.

“Exposure to passive smoke in childhood causes direct and irreversible damage to the structure of the arteries,” said Seana Gall, a researcher in cardiovascular epidemiology who led the study at the University of Tasmania.

She said parents, or even those thinking about becoming parents, should quit smoking – both to aid their own health and protect the future health of their children.

Smoking causes lung cancer, which is often fatal, and is the world’s biggest cause of premature death from chronic conditions like heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure.

On top of the 6 million people a year killed by their own smoking, the World Health Organization (WHO) says another 600,000 die a year as a result of exposure to other peoples’ smoke – so-called second-hand or passive smoking.

Of the more than 4,000 chemicals in tobacco smoke, at least 250 are known to be harmful and more than 50 are known to cause cancer, the WHO says – and creating 100 percent smoke-free environments is the only way to protect people fully.

About 40 percent of all children are regularly exposed to second-hand smoke at home, and almost a third of the deaths attributable to second-hand smoke are in children.

ARTERY WALLS

This latest study, published in the European Heart Journal, was the first to follow children through to adulthood to look at links between exposure to parents’ smoking and thickness of the innermost two layers of the arterial wall, known as carotid intima-media thickness (IMT).

Researchers from Finland and Australia looked at data from 2,401 people in Finland 1,375 people in Australia who were asked about their parents’ smoking habits. The scientists used ultrasound to measure the thickness of the children’s artery walls once they had reached adulthood.

The results showed that carotid IMT in adulthood was 0.015 millimeters thicker in those exposed to both parents smoking than in those whose parents did not smoke.

Gall said that while this was a “modest” increase, it was nonetheless an important extra and irreversible risk for suffering heart attacks or strokes later in life.

Since children of parents who smoke are also more likely to grow up to be smokers themselves, and more likely to be overweight, their heart health risks are often already raised, she said, and the second-hand smoke adds yet more risk.

The researchers said the findings showed reducing children’s exposure to smoke is a public health priority.

“Legislation can reduce passive smoke exposure, with restriction of smoking in public places reducing hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory disease,” they wrote, adding that banning smoking in cars with children in them would also have a significant positive effect.

The United States, Australia and Canada have already banned smoking in cars carrying children, and Britain said last month that it too would be introducing a ban soon.

Source: Reuters

Children’s weight affected by bedroom TVs, active gaming

Children’s weight is influenced by whether they have active video games and if there is a television in the bedroom, according to the results of two new studies.The studies, done separately and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, had different outcomes: children who had television sets in their bedrooms gained weight, while children provided active video games along with information about weight management and nutrition lost weight.

In the first study, researchers from Temple University in Philadelphia, the UnitedHealth Group of Minnesota and the University of Queensland in Australia, conducted a 16-week clinical trial of children from YMCAs and schools in Texas, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The study involved 75 children who were deemed overweight or obese with a body mass index (BMI) averaging 2.15 and ranged in age from 10 to 12 years old. Children on medications that might contribute to their weight loss or gain were excluded from the study.

The children were split into two groups: one was provided a game console, motion capture device (such as Xbox and Kinect) and active sports games, while the other group was given the same hardware but less active games.

Both groups were also provided information about how to manage their weight and weekly goals for their diet, including nutrition advice. During the course of the study, their height and weight were measured at the start and at weeks 8 and 16 of the program.

Participants in the active gaming group were given a motion sensor to wear during their waking hours. The motion sensors provided researchers with information about the intensity of each child’s physical activity during those 16 weeks.

At the end of the study, researchers discovered the group that didn’t get the active games “exhibited little or no change in physical activity” and had lost little weight.

Source: CBC news

Infant Sleep Machines at Maximum Volume Reported as Hearing Risk

Devices that produce soothing sounds in order to lull infants to sleep can be loud enough at maximum volume to damage their hearing, researchers reported Monday.

Infant sleep machines emit white noise or nature sounds to drown out everyday disturbances to a baby’s sleep. The machines, sometimes embedded in cuddly stuffed animals, are popular gifts at baby showers and routinely recommended by parenting books and websites.

Some sleep experts advise parents to use these noisemakers all night, every night, to ensure the best rest for a newborn. Many parents say their babies become so used to the sounds of rainfall or birds that they will not nap without them.

Researchers at the University of Toronto evaluated 14 popular sleep machines at maximum volume and found they produced between 68.8 to 92.9 decibels at 30 centimeters, about the distance one might be placed from an infant’s head. Three exceeded 85 decibels, the workplace safety limit for adults on an eight-hour shift for accumulated exposure as determined by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. One machine was so loud that two hours of use would exceed workplace noise limits.

At 100 centimeters, all the machines tested were louder than the 50-decibel limit averaged over an hour set for hospital nurseries in 1999 by an expert panel concerned with improving newborn sleep and their speech intelligibility.

“These machines are capable of delivering noise that we think is unsafe for full-grown adults in mines,” said Dr. Blake Papsin, the senior author of the paper and the chief otolaryngologist at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. Dr. Papsin got the idea for this study after a parent brought a portable white noise machine to the hospital that sounded as roaring as a carwash.

“Unless parents are adequately warned of the danger, or the design of the machines by manufacturers is changed to be safer, then the potential for harm exists, and parents need to know about it,” said Dr. Gordon B. Hughes, the program director of clinical trials for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, who was not involved in the study.

Safe use is possible, the study’s authors suggest. “Farther away is less dangerous, a lower volume is better and shorter durations of time, all things that deliver less sound pressure to the baby,” Dr. Papsin said.

Yet some models are designed to be affixed to the crib, like Homedics’ SoundSpa Glow Giraffe and Baby Einstein’s Sea Dreams Soother.

The findings are bound to surprise many parents.

After finding a recommendation for white noise in “Happiest Baby on the Block,” Naomi Tucker, 39, bought a machine so that her daughter, Chiara, 15 months, could fall asleep nightly to ocean waves. The device masks sirens and household noise in the family’s two-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles.

A fan outside her door is “an extra barrier of sound, so we don’t have to tiptoe,” said Ms. Tucker, a family therapist. For naps in the stroller or the car, she and her husband use a white noise app on an old cellphone.

“It’s surprising because I hadn’t thought of it, but I can see why that would be the case,” Ms. Tucker said of the study finding. Her daughter’s Graco device is set to maximum volume, but it is still not all that loud, she said. It is also five feet from the crib.

Dr. Marc Weissbluth, a pediatrician and author of “Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child,” said parents could still use the machines, with new precautions.

“If it’s too close or it’s too loud, this might not be healthy for your baby,” he said. But “a quiet machine that’s far away may cause no harm whatsoever.”

The study authors recommended that manufacturers limit the maximum noise level of infant sleep machines.

Source: New York Times

Fully-formed teeth growing inside baby’s BRAIN: Medical Miracle

A four-month-old baby boy was found to have teeth growing in his brain. The unnamed infant in Maryland, U.S., had a rare type of brain tumour which contained multiple fully formed teeth.

He is thought to be the first person in the world to be found to have teeth within this type of brain tumour. The baby required surgery to remove the tumour, but, a year on, he is now making a good recovery.

The child first came to the attention of doctors after a routine health check revealed his head was growing faster than expected.  According to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine, he had an MRI scan which revealed a tumour near his pituitary gland which measured 4.1cm by 4cm by 3.5cm.

The scan revealed that the tumour also contained teeth very similar to those found in the lower jaw. The baby underwent surgery to remove the tumour and further tests revealed it was a slow-growing mass called adamantinomatous craniopharyngioma.

The tumour is thought to have arisen from Rathke’s pouch, an embryonic precursor to part of the pituitary gland. These tumours are sometimes filled with viscous, yellow fluid containing cholesterol crystals.

They usually start in the area around the pituitary gland but spread into surrounding areas and they often recur after they have, seemingly, been completely removed. It is very rare for them to spread outside the brain.

It is now a year since the body underwent surgery and he is making good progress. However, he has had to have a shunt fitted to drain brain and spinal fluid from his head. He also has to take thyroid and adrenal hormone-replacement drugs.

He still undergoes regular MRI scans to ensure the tumour has not returned. The doctors who treat the boy say it has long been suspected that the type of tumour he suffered from form from the same cells as those involved in the creation of teeth.

However, until now, surgeons had never actually seen teeth within one of these tumours. Dr Narlin Beaty, a neurosurgeon at the University of Maryland Medical Center, who performed the boy’s surgery, told Live Science: ‘It’s not every day you see teeth in any type of tumour in the brain. In a craniopharyngioma, it’s unheard of.’

He added that these tumours often contain some calcium deposits ‘but when we pulled out a full tooth…I think that’s something slightly different’.

Source: Daily mail

Breastfeeding may boost IQ in babies: Study

Children who are breastfed score higher on IQ tests and perform better in school, scientists say.

A new study by sociologists at Brigham Young University pinpoints two parenting skills as the real source of this cognitive boost: Responding to children’s emotional cues and reading to children starting at 9 months of age.

Breastfeeding mothers tend to do both of those things, said lead study author Ben Gibbs.

“It’s really the parenting that makes the difference,” said Gibbs.

“Breastfeeding matters in others ways, but this actually gives us a better mechanism and can shape our confidence about interventions that promote school readiness,” said Gibbs.

According to the analysis, improvements in sensitivity to emotional cues and time reading to children could yield 2-3 months’ worth of brain development by age 4 (as measured by math and reading readiness assessments).

“Because these are four-year-olds, a month or two represents a non-trivial chunk of time,” Gibbs said.

“And if a child is on the edge of needing special education, even a small boost across some eligibility line could shape a child’s educational trajectory,” said Gibbs.

Researchers utilised a national data set that followed 7,500 mothers and their children from birth to five years of age.

The data set is rich with information on the home environment, including how early and how often parents read to their kids.

Additionally, each of the mothers in the study also participated in video-taped activities with their children.

As the child tried to complete a challenging task, the mother’s supportiveness and sensitivity to their child’s emotional cues were measured.

Sandra Jacobson of Wayne State University School of Medicine noted that children in the study who were breastfed for 6 months or longer performed the best on reading assessments because they also “experienced the most optimal parenting practices.

“Gibbs and Forste found that reading to an infant every day as early as age 9 months and sensitivity to the child’s cues during social interactions, rather than breastfeeding per se, were significant predictors of reading readiness at age 4 years,” said Jacobson.

The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Source: Times of India

 

Gene Study Offers Clues to Why Autism Strikes More Males

why girls are less likely than boys to have an autism spectrum disorder.

It turns out that girls tend not to develop autism when only mild genetic abnormalities exist, the researchers said. But when they are diagnosed with the disorder, they are more likely to have more extreme genetic mutations than boys who show the same symptoms.

“Girls tolerate neurodevelopmental mutations more than boys do. This is really what the study shows,” said study author Sebastien Jacquemont, an assistant professor of genetic medicine at the University Hospital of Lausanne, in Switzerland.

“To push a girl over the threshold for autism or any of these neurodevelopmental disorders, it takes more of these mutations,” Jacquemont added. “It’s about resilience to genetic insult.”

The dilemma is that the researchers don’t really know why this is so. “It’s more of an observation at a molecular level,” Jacquemont noted.

In the study, the Swiss researchers collaborated with scientists from the University of Washington School of Medicine to analyze about 16,000 DNA samples and sequencing data sets from people with neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorders.

The investigators also analyzed genetic data from almost 800 families affected by autism for the study, which was released online Feb. 27 in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

The researchers analyzed copy-number variants (CNVs), which are individual variations in the number of copies of a particular gene. They also looked at single-nucleotide variants (SNVs), which are DNA sequence variations affecting a single nucleotide. Nucleotides are the basic building blocks of DNA.

The study found that females diagnosed with any neurodevelopmental disorder, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and intellectual disability, had more harmful CNVs than males who were diagnosed with the same disorder. Females with autism also had more harmful SNVs than males with the condition.

“There’s a well-known disparity when it comes to developmental disorders between boys and girls, and it’s been puzzling,” Jacquemont said. “And there have been quite a bit of papers trying to investigate this bias that we’ve seen in the clinic.”

The study authors pointed out that autism affects four boys for every one girl. The ratio increases to seven-to-one when looking at high-functioning autism cases.

It’s an interesting study, said Dr. Andrew Adesman, chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York.

“It’s not an easy study to read, but certainly the take-away suggests it tries to lend further support to the assumption that the ratio of males to females [who have autism] is affected by genetic vulnerabilities — that it has a genetic underpinning,” Adesman said.

What do the findings mean for parents and patients?

Adesman said there are no immediate benefits, but the knowledge can help direct future research.

“This isn’t going to lead to a breakthrough in treatment, but from a clinical standpoint it may help researchers and academics understand why it is that developmental disorders seem to be more common in boys than girls,” he noted.

The new research also reinforces that genetic differences — or vulnerabilities — aren’t limited to sex chromosomes, Adesman added.

“The presumption has been, ‘Well gee, boys have a Y chromosome and girls don’t, so are there problems with the Y chromosome that explain it?'” Adesman noted.

“The bottom line is that there are a lot of different genetic abnormalities and atypicalities that result in developmental disorders in children and adults,” Adesman explained. “Women seem to be a little more resilient in terms of being able to have minor abnormalities without having a developmental problem.”

Source: health

Too posh to push? Beware! C-section boosts child’s risk of obesity

A new study conducted by researchers suggests that babies born by caesarean section are more likely to struggle with obesity later in life.

Not just this, C-sections also boost the odds of certain problems with later pregnancies, including abnormalities in the placenta that can lead to severe bleeding during labour, type-1 diabetes in childhood and other diseases.

Findings of a research conducted at Imperial College London, which include data from 10 countries, suggest babies born through caesarean section were 26 percent more likely to face weight issues during adulthood than those born by vaginal delivery.

Further, the study also showed that average BMI of adults born by caesarean section is around half a unit more than those born by vaginal delivery.

The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Source: Zee news