August 18, 2009, 11:02 PM CT

Milk is safe after treatment for milk allergy

Some children with a history of severe milk allergy can safely drink milk and consume other dairy products every day, as per research led by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and reported in the Aug. 10 online edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology

Investigators followed up with a subset of children who were part of an earlier Hopkins Children's-led study published in 2008 in which patients allergic to milk were given increasingly higher doses of milk over time. For a number of of them, continuous exposure to milk allergens the proteins that trigger bad reactions slowly and gradually retrained their immune systems to better tolerate the very food that once sent those systems into overdrive.

The follow-up of 18 children ages 6 to 16 whose severe milk allergies had eased or disappeared observed that all children were able to safely consume milk at home, and that reactions, while common, were generally mild and grew milder and milder over time. The follow-up varied from three to 17 months, depending on how long it took patients to increase their milk intake.

These findings also suggest that regular use of milk and dairy foods appears to be needed for children to maintain their tolerance.

"We now have evidence from other studies that some children once successfully treated remain allergy-free even without daily exposure, while in others the allergies rdren to maintain their tolerance.

"We now have evidence from other studies that some children once successfully treated remain allergy-free even without daily exposure, while in others the allergies return once they stop regular daily exposure to milk," says Robert Wood, M.D., the study's senior investigator and director of Allergy & Immunology at Hopkins Children's. "This may mean that some patients are truly cured of their allergy, while in others the immune system adapts to regular daily exposure to milk and may, in fact, need the exposure to continue to tolerate it," he adds......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

August 18, 2009, 7:58 AM CT

Ibuprofen is as effective as acetaminophen with codeine

Children with arm fractures fared as well with ibuprofen to control their pain as acetaminophen with codeine, as per a newly released study by scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Children's Research Institute.

The study, which was led by Amy Drendel, D.O., assistant professor of pediatrics at the Medical College, will appear in the Aug. 18, 2009, issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine Dr. Drendel also is a pediatric emergency medicine specialist at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

Up to this point, an evidence-based pain management regimen for children with simple arm fractures after discharge from the emergency department has not been identified.

"Our study calls into question the practice of using acetaminophen with codeine as a rescue medicine if ibuprofen fails to treat fracture pain for children," explains Dr. Drendel.

This study compared how children ages four to 18 years respond to therapy when prescribed ibuprofen or acetaminophen with codeine for pain. Overall, there was no difference in the number of children that failed therapy in the two groups but the children receiving ibuprofen reported better functional outcomes, higher satisfaction, and fewer adverse effects than those receiving acetaminophen with codeine......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

August 13, 2009, 6:50 AM CT

Sleep patterns in children and teenagers could indicate risk for depression

Sleep patterns can help predict which adolescents might be at greatest risk for developing depression, a researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center has found in a five-year study.

Sleep is a biological factor known to be linked to adult depression. Depressed adults experience rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep earlier in the sleep cycle than people who are not depressed. Until this study, available online and in the July edition of Neuropsychopharmacology, it had been unclear whether this relationship held true in adolescents.

Dr. Uma Rao, professor of psychiatry at UT Southwestern and main author of the study, observed that adolescents with a familial risk for depression but without a depression diagnosis experienced shorter REM latency, meaning they reached the REM stage more quickly. Those adolescents were more likely to develop depression by the end of the five-year study period than those who reached REM sleep later in the cycle.

"Sleep is probably more helpful in determining who is at risk for developing depression than in being a diagnostic marker for depression since REM latency of those adolescents was shorter before they even developed the illness," Dr. Rao said.

Adolescent depression is complex to prevent and to treat in part because baseline levels of sleep and other factors used to diagnosis depression are not clearly defined. For example, in clinical studies, adolescents without manifestation of mental illness can be labeled erroneously as control group members because they haven't yet reached the highest-risk period for developing depression mid- to late-adolescence and early adulthood......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

July 29, 2009, 11:12 PM CT

Mothers need infant feeding information

A systematic literature review of mothers' experiences with bottle-feeding observed that while mothers recognize the benefits of breastfeeding, those who bottle-feed with infant formula do not receive adequate information and support from their healthcare providers and thus, ultimately put their baby's health at risk. "While it is important to promote breastfeeding," the authors conclude, "it is also necessary to ensure that the needs of bottle-feeding mothers are not overlooked".

To help meet this need, the International Formula Council* (IFC) provides helpful online resources, including video and print information that review the basics of safe infant formula preparation (available through the www.infantformula.org website). "One of our goals as an association is to help parents make informed infant feeding choices. Infant formula manufacturers have long provided their own brand-specific information on infant formula labels and websites. Our online tools build on these resources and offer parents practical tips that help them prepare and store infant formula appropriately," said Mardi Mountford, IFC Executive Vice President.

The literature review the first of its kind appears in the July 2009 Archives of Disease in Childhood, a publication of the peer-evaluated British Medical Journal, and was conducted by scientists at the University of Cambridge. A major finding of the review, which examined 23 studies (seven from the United States, 14 from the United Kingdom, one from New Zealand, and one from Australia) with over 13,000 participants, was that mothers who did not receive bottle-feeding information from their healthcare providers often turned to family and friends for guidance a trend which can perpetuate errors in infant formula preparation and handling......... Posted by: Emily      Read more         Source

July 28, 2009, 11:39 PM CT

Pesticides linked to childhood cancer

Washington, DC A newly released study by scientists at the Georgetown's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center finds a higher level of common household pesticides in the urine of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), a cancer that develops most usually between three and seven years of age. The findings are published in the recent issue of the journal Therapeutic Drug Monitoring

Scientists caution that these findings should not be seen as cause-and-effect, only that the study suggests an association between pesticide exposure and development of childhood ALL.

"In our study, we compared urine samples from children with ALL and their mothers with healthy children and their moms. We found elevated levels of common household pesticides more often in the mother-child pairs affected by cancer," says the study's lead investigator, Offie Soldin, PhD, an epidemiologist at Lombardi. Soldin cautions, "We shouldn't assume that pesticides caused these cancers, but our findings certainly support the need for more robust research in this area".

The study was conducted between January 2005 and January 2008 with volunteer participants from Lombardi and Children's National Medical Center who live in the Washington metropolitan area. It included 41 pairs of children with ALL and their mothers (cases), and 41 pairs of healthy children and their mothers (controls). For comparison purposes, the case pairs were matched with control pairs by age, sex and county of residence. Prior studies in agricultural areas of the country have suggested a relationship between pesticides and childhood cancers, but scientists say this is the first study conducted in a large, metropolitan area......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

July 28, 2009, 11:33 PM CT

New Drug for Children with High-Risk Leukemia

Each year, approximately 4,500 children in America are diagnosed with leukemia, as per the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. A potentially deadly cancer of the blood, it is the most common cancer in children.

"Modern medicine can cure eight out of 10 cases of childhood leukemia, so parents can still be hopeful when they hear a diagnosis," says Dr. Shai Izraeli of Tel Aviv University's Sackler School of Medicine and Sheba Medical Center. "Our research gives hope and life to the 20% who might not make it as well as those who may experience a relapse".

The first scientists to discover a mutation of the JAK2 protein in patients with Down syndrome, the Tel Aviv University team suspected that this protein might also be associated with other disorders and diseases - and they were right. Based on the successful results of this research a drug that is already in clinical trials for a blood disease common in adults appears to be relevant for acute childhood leukemia. If initial trials go well, the drug could fast-track through approvals and could be available for treating children with leukemia in only a few years.

The recent findings are based on Dr. Izraeli's original discovery of the JAK2 in Down syndrome, published recently in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet......... Posted by: Janet      Read more         Source

July 28, 2009, 11:30 PM CT

Being active as a preschooler pays off

Being active at age 5 helps kids stay lean as they age even if they don't remain as active later in childhood, a new University of Iowa study shows.

"We call this effect 'banking' because the kids benefit later on, similar to having a savings account at a bank. The protective effect is independent of what happens in between," said main author Kathleen Janz, professor of health and sport studies in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. "The implication is that even 5-year-olds should be encouraged to be as active as possible because it pays off as they grow older".

The UI team tested the body fat and activity level of 333 kids at ages 5, 8 and 11 using gold-standard technology: a special scanner that accurately measures bone, fat and muscle tissue, and an accelerometer that measures movement every minute. The kids wore accelerometers to record their activity level for up to five days, providing much more reliable data than relying on kids or parents to track minutes of exercise.

The study, published this month in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, indicates that kids who are active at age 5 end up with less fat at age 8 and 11, even when controlling for their accumulated level of activity.

The average 5-year-old in the study got 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise per day. For every 10 minutes on top of that, kids had one-third of a pound less fat tissue at ages 8 and 11......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source

June 25, 2009, 6:01 PM CT

More gene mutations linked to autism risk

More pieces in the complex autism inheritance puzzle are emerging in the latest study from a research team including geneticists from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and several collaborating institutions. This study identified 27 different genetic regions where rare copy number variations missing or extra copies of DNA segments were found in the genes of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), but not in the healthy controls. The complex combination of multiple genetic duplications and deletions is thought to interfere with gene function, which can disrupt the production of proteins necessary for normal neurological development.

"We focused on changes in the exons of DNAprotein-coding areas in which deletions or duplications are more likely to directly disrupt biological functions," said study leader Hakon Hakonarson, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and associate professor of Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. "We identified additional autism susceptibility genes, a number of of which, as we previously found, belong to the neuronal cell adhesion molecule family involved in the development of brain circuitry in early childhood." He added that the team discovered a number of "private" gene mutations, those found only in one or a few individuals or familiesan indication of genetic complexity, in which a number of different gene changes may contribute to an autism spectrum disorder......... Posted by: JoAnn      Read more         Source