Posts Tagged ‘Pediatrics’

In an ironic twist of reality a South Korean couple was arrested for starving their child after spending long hours on the internet raising a virtual baby together. The couple allegedly neglected their prematurely born three month old daughter, feeding her just once in between 12-hour-long periods at an internet cafe. “The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life, because they didn’t have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby,” said Chung Jin-won, a Korean police officer. The couple was raising a virtual child in a popular online Korean role-playing game. “Online game addiction can blur the line between reality and the virtual world. It seems that taking care of their on-line game character erased any sense of guilt they may have had for neglecting their daughter,” said Professor Kwak Dae-kyung of Seoul’s Dongguk University. [via CNN.com]

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A study published in the March, 2010 edition of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine suggests that children who spend more time engaged with electronic communication and entertainment mediums such as cellphones, televisions and computers, form lower quality relationships with their families and peers. Conversely, teens who spend more time reading and doing homework reported a higher level of attachment to parents. Overall, the more screen time teens get, the more difficulty they had in forming relationships or emotional bonds with others. The authors theorize that spending more time interacting with screen-based activities prevent teens from interacting with those around them. “However, it is also possible that adolescents with poor attachment relationships with immediate friends and family use screen-based activities to facilitate new attachment figures such as online friendships or parasocial relationships with television characters or personalities,” the authors write. Can modern technology really impact social development, psychological and physical well-being? Certainly. But, could there be positive benefits of screen time as well? [via PHYSORG]

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A new study in this month’s issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology demonstrates that excessive weight gain during pregnancy, especially in the first trimester, can increase a woman’s risk of developing gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM). Although it’s known that too much weight gain can lead to GDM (which is one of the reasons why doctors carefully follow a pregnant woman’s weight), results from the current study shows that women who gained more weight during pregnancy than recommended by the US Institute of Medicine were 50% more likely to develop the disorder. GDM can lead to early delivery, increased risk of c-sections, type 2 diabetes in the mother post-partum, and even increases the likelihood that the child will develop diabetes and obesity later in life. [HealthDay via Yahoo! News]

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In light of First Lady Michelle Obama’s initiative to combat childhood obesity, updated data shows that the rate of childhood obesity has, indeed, not declined. According to the most recent National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 2007-2008), the percentage of obese children, defined by BMI, has remained steady with nearly 17% of children having BMIs above the 95th percentile. This figure is identical to a decade ago when childhood obesity skyrocketed from approximately 5% to 17% between 1980 and 1999. Does this mean that the rate of childhood obesity has plateaued? Are we finally seeing the result of years of effort in attempting to curb childhood obesity? Perhaps, but one thing we know is that the rate has not declined and continued effort is much needed in order to reduce the future health burden obesity can confer on these children. [via Journal Watch Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine]

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A new mobile information service announced today aims to provide any mother-to-be (who has a cell phone) with free text messages that will guide her throughout pregnancy and until her child’s first birthday. The service, called Text4baby, was announced in conjunction with all major US wireless carriers and is currently operational. Women who sign up for the service by texting BABY (or BEBE for Spanish) to 511411 will receive free SMS text messages each week, timed to their due date or baby’s date of birth. The text4baby messages are not personalized, but the information in each message is relevant to the mother’s pregnancy timeline or the age of her child. The content will include a comprehensive variety of topics from the CDC and the Health Resources and Services Administration, including tips on immunizations, nutrition, prenatal care, emotional well being, drugs and alcohol, labor and delivery, breastfeeding, mental health, birth defects prevention, car seat safety, exercise and fitness, developmental milestones, family violence, and more. [via Text4baby.org]

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Two of the world’s foremost metropolitan cities have joined together to fight childhood obesity. In a report titled “A Tale of Two ObesCities” researchers from London Metropolitan University and City University of New York have found demographic similarities between obese children in both cities. Notably, both cities are characterized by high levels of income disparity with the poorest children having the highest rates of obesity. In London 36.3% of children are obese by the age of 11, compared with 40% in New York. The report demonstrates that the two cities can benefit from collaboration and learning from each other’s experiences in combating childhood obesity. The main recommendations of the report include:

- Build active design principles into building codes, housing strategies

-Promote and support urban agriculture as a sustainable and health promoting use of green spaces

-Promote access to places where people can by physically active and promote walking and cycling

-Implement a universal free school meal program with nutritional standards

-Promote research to help cities understand how the beat health inequalities

[via Medical News Today]

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The latest pediatric HIV study shows that children with HIV are living much longer than in the 1990s when doctors started prescribing antiretroviral drugs. However, young people with HIV continue to die at 30 times the rate of youth of similar age who do not have HIV. Multi-organ failure and kidney disease continue to be the major causes of death, along with infections. But, the types of infections have changed, from infections traditionally associated with AIDS to infections that are more common among children without HIV. This demonstrates that antiretroviral therapy is working and helping most HIV-infected children live into adulthood. “Will these children have a normal lifespan? Unfortunately, we don’t have all the answers yet. Currently, we don’t have the means to prevent all the complications of HIV infection.” said Lynne Mofenson, M.D., chief of the Pediatric, Adolescent and Maternal AIDS branch at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). [via NIH News]

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A new study published in the current issue of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine shows that the number of parents placing their infants “back to sleep” have been diminishing since 2001. The Back To Sleep campaign was started in 1994 by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) in an effort to reduce Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Putting infants to sleep on their backs (rather than their stomachs) reduces the risk of SIDS, which occurs most commonly between the ages of 2 to 4 months. Since the launch of the Back to Sleep campaign the number of babies placed on their backs to sleep jumped from 25% to about 70% and the SIDS rate declined by more than 50%. However, this trend has fallen off since the year 2001. Not only are more parents not educated about placing their babies on their backs (almost half of the mothers surveyed said they had received no advice at all from their physician or that he/she had recommended stomach sleeping), the study also shows that black mothers and caregivers are more likely than whites to place infants on their stomachs to sleep. The take-home message? Physicians need to be more proactive in educating parents and caretakers and we, as individuals, need to be proactive about educating our friends and families. [via MedlinePlus]

Learn more in the Guide to SIDS.

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Car safety seats are one of the most effective ways to protect children from injury and death in the first years of life. For the best protection in a crash, car seats require infants to be placed in an upright position. However, this posture can partially compress the chest wall and reduce airway size, resulting in lower levels of oxygen. The study, “A Comparison of Respiratory Patterns in Healthy Term Infants Placed in Car Safety Seats and Beds,” compared oxygen levels in 200 newborns while in a hospital crib, car bed and car seat. The mean oxygen saturation level was significantly lower in the car seat (95.7 percent) and the car bed (96.3 percent) compared to the crib (97.9 percent). Previous studies have found similar effects on premature infants; this study confirms the respiration of full-term infants is also affected by car seats and car beds. The study authors suggest these safety devices should be used only for protection during travel, and not as replacement for cribs. [News release via American Academy of Pediatrics]

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Next month, the American Academy of Pediatrics will publish its new statement on the pediatrician’s role in preventing youth violence, and for the first time a section on bullying is to be included. One in four children report that they have been involved in bullying – either as the bully or the victim – making this a serious topic in which all physicians, parents, and schools should be proactive in confronting. The aim of the new recommendations is to change the culture of bullying through class discussions, parent meetings and consistent responses to every incidence of bullying. One of the paradigm shifts in thought about bullying is that the victims must be protected, but at the same, attention should be focused on bullies as well – research has shown that bullies are less likely to finish school or hold down a job. Concurrently, victims of bullying are more likely to experience depression and suicidal thoughts. Hopefully, the new recommendations will go a long way in reducing these long-term consequences of bullying and get people to realize that bullying is not a normal part of childhood which is often deemed by parents to be a rite of passage necessary for success later in life.

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