Parents Daily News Roundup

Friday, January 18th, 2013

Obama Evaluating Early Childhood Education Push In Second Term
Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama’s education secretary, has a slogan that summarizes his tenure and the view of his mission that he shares with his boss. “Education is the civil rights issue of our generation,” Duncan says. (via Huffington Post)

Duncan On Guns In Schools: Hard To Teach Kids Scared Of Being Killed
Too many students worry more about being killed by a gun than learning in the classroom, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said on Thursday, as he cautioned that firearms alone do not make schools safer. (via Huffington Post)

Potential to Prevent, Reverse Disabilities in Children Born Prematurely, Study Suggests
Physician-scientists at Oregon Health & Science University Doernbecher Children’s Hospital are challenging the way pediatric neurologists think about brain injury in the pre-term infant. (via Science Daily)

New Study Challenges Links Between Daycare and Behavioral Issues
A new study that looked at more than 75,000 children in day care in Norway found little evidence that the amount of time a child spends in child care leads to an increase in behavioral problems, according to researchers from the United States and Norway. (via Science Daily)

Wait to Remove Kids’ Infected Adenoids: Study
Removing the adenoids of kids who frequently get colds, sinus infections and laryngitis is more expensive and doesn’t lead to better health or fewer symptoms than a “watchful waiting” approach, according to new research. (via Reuters)

Obesity in Young Kids Dropped in NYC, Grew in LA
In the battle against childhood obesity, New York City appears to be doing better than Los Angeles, at least for low-income preschoolers. (via Fox News)

World Prematurity Day in the NICU

Monday, November 19th, 2012

This post is written by Dana Points, editor in chief of Parents.

Watching a nurse change what must surely be the world’s smallest diaper will do more to motivate you to want to prevent prematurity than reading troubling statistics about early birth. Nevertheless, I’ll share some: Worldwide, 15 million babies are born preterm each year. 1.1 million die and many others are disabled. The rate of preterm birth in the U.S. has dropped over the last five years, but we still have the highest rate of any industrialized country.

I saw the diaper change–and incubator after incubator holding the tiniest babies, often attached to ventilators and monitors–during a visit to the neonatal intensive care unit at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, which is affiliated with Stanford University School of Medicine. There, the March of Dimes has funded a unique research center where scientists from across a wide array of specialties are examining the causes of prematurity in hopes of finding cures. (I had the opportunity to make the visit because I am a March of Dimes trustee.)

Researchers are looking at the role microorganisms that live in our digestive tract, on our skin and elsewhere in the body play in prematurity; at the connections between genes and the environment; and at the way data can be used to examine why some hospitals have higher rates of early births and what doctors can do to bring down the numbers. Here at Parents we have “bagel Wednesdays” when our staff shares breakfast and conversation. But at the MOD’s Prematurity Research Center they have “preterm Wednesdays” where scientists share findings and ideas. Pretty humbling to think about the difference.

The scientists and the babies are heroic here, but so are the California moms-to-be and moms who are participating in the center’s research by giving weekly samples scraped from their gums and skin, as well as urine and blood samples, which scientists are using to help identify possible causes of prematurity. The lab’s giant freezers are crowded with 10,000 samples. The vials arrive in thermal lunch bags like the kind my kids use. These are bright red so as not to be confused with…lunch (photo to the right).

The goal of the Prematurity Research Center is essentially to put the NICU out of business, and the doctors who spend their days treating these babies say their top priority is prevention. Until that goal is achieved, we’ll keep World Prematurity Day on the calendar as a reminder so the tiniest babies won’t be forgotten.

Parents Daily News Roundup

Monday, October 8th, 2012

Nearly Half of Children With Autism Wander From Safety: Survey
Nearly half of children with autism wander or “elope” from safety — often to pursue a special interest or goal — with more than half of those kids disappearing long enough to cause great concern about their well-being, new research suggests. (via U.S. News and World Report)

Certain Eye Injuries in Kids May Indicate Child Abuse: Study
Physicians can use eye examinations to figure out whether infant and toddler head injuries were caused by accidental injury or child abuse, suggests a new study that adds to existing evidence on this method of detecting abuse. (via U.S. News and World Report)

Case Count Rises to 91 in Fungal Meningitis Outbreak
At least 91 people have been infected with an unusual type of meningitis caused by contaminated steroid injections, federal health officials said Sunday, with seven deaths. (via NBC News)

Fresh Blood Not Better for Transfusions for Premature Infants, Clinical Trial Shows
In a finding that runs counter to commonly held beliefs about fresh being better, a clinical trial shows that acutely ill premature babies who received fresher blood did not fare better than those who received the current standard of care. (via Science Daily)

Rare Program Allows Arrested Moms to Stay Home with Their Children
A New York program allows arrested mothers to live with their children in a private apartment instead of prison while they serve out court mandates. (via Fox News)

Parents Daily News Roundup

Friday, August 31st, 2012

Swallowed batteries send thousands of kids to ER yearly
A growing number of children are swallowing batteries, especially circular “button batteries,” leading to thousands of emergency room visits each year and, in a few cases, deaths. (via Fox News)

How Texting and IMing Helps Introverted Teens
Digital communication may seem impersonal, but that distance may also provide some benefits, especially for troubled teens (via Time)

Sweetened drinks may be linked to premature births
Women who drink a lot of sweet sodas during pregnancy may be more likely to give birth prematurely, a new study suggests. (via Fox News)

Breast cancer survivors may face second threat: heart failure
Researchers found a much higher rate of heart failure among breast cancer survivors than has previously been reported, and said their findings likely reflect the real-world risks that women have. (via NBC)

Parents Daily News Roundup

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

Survival Rates for Premies Are Better Than Previously Reported
Premature babies are more likely to survive when they are born in high-level neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) than in hospitals without such facilities. Pediatric researchers who analyzed more than 1.3 million premature births over a 10-year span found that the survival benefits applied not only to extremely preterm babies, but also to moderately preterm newborns. (via Science Daily)

Severely Obese Babies: Hearts Already in Danger
Heart disease is normally associated with middle age, but the early warning signs were detected in children between the ages of two and 12. Two-thirds of the 307 children studied had a least one early symptom such as high blood pressure. (via BBC)

Social Deprivation Has a Measurable Effect On Brain Growth
Severe psychological and physical neglect produces measurable changes in children’s brains, finds a study led by Boston Children’s Hospital. But the study also suggests that positive interventions can partially reverse these changes. (via Science Daily)

After 30 Years, Unintended Birth Rate Still Almost 40 Percent
About 37 percent of births in the United States are the result of unintended pregnancies, a proportion that has remained fairly steady since 1982, according to new research from the National Center for Health Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (via ABC)

Childhood Obesity Linked to Cancer Risk
According to the American Heart Association, one in three children and teenagers are now considered overweight or obese. There is a growing recognition of health problems associated with extra pounds, including the risk of diabetes, heart disease, and joint and muscle pain. (via Science Daily)

Parents Daily News Roundup

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Mother’s Blood Shows Birth Defects in Fetal DNA
Researchers said they were able to sequence the entire genome of a fetus using only a blood sample from the mother, an advance in the effort to find noninvasive ways for expectant parents to determine if their babies will be born with genetic conditions. (via Fox News)

Smoking Mothers’ Embryos ‘Grow More Slowly’
French academics in an IVF clinic took regular pictures of an egg from the moment it was fertilized until it was ready to be implanted into the mother. At all stages of development, embryos from smokers were consistently a couple of hours behind, a study showed. (via BBC News)

Too Much Coffee Could Hurt Women’s Chances of IVF Success
Women who drank five or more cups of coffee a day were about 50% less likely to get pregnant through in-vitro fertilization than non-drinkers, according to a recent Danish study. The authors noted it was “comparable to the detrimental effect of smoking.” (via TIME)

Company Studying OxyContin’s Effect in Children
The maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin confirms that a clinical trial is currently underway to measure the opioid’s effects in children. Although doctors can prescribe OxyContin off-label to pediatric patients, the drug — which was overwhelmingly tested in adults — is not approved for use in children by the Food and Drug Administration. (via CNN)

Premature Birth May Raise Risk for Mental Illness, Study Reports
Young adults born very premature — at less than 32 weeks’ gestation — were more than twice as likely to be hospitalized for schizophrenia or delusional disorders, almost three times as likely for major depression, and more than seven times as likely for bipolar illness. (via NY Times)

Parents Daily News Roundup

Monday, July 2nd, 2012

As Crops Rot, Millions Go Hungry in India
Every day some 3,000 Indian children die from illnesses related to malnutrition, and yet countless heaps of rodent-infested wheat and rice are rotting in fields across the north of their own country. (via Reuters)

Slightly Early Birth May Hurt Baby’s Academic Performance
Kids who get too early a start at life – even if they are born in the first half of the gestation period associated with “normal term” birth – appear more likely to struggle at reading and math by the time they reach third grade, new research suggest. (via ABC News)

Hitting Your Kids Increases their Risk of Mental Illness
A new study in Pediatrics finds that harsh physical punishment increases the risk of mental disorders — even when the punishment doesn’t stoop to the level of actual abuse. People who experienced physical punishment were more likely to experience nearly every type of mental illness examined. (via TIME)

California Bill Would Let Children Have More than Two Parents
When adults fight over parenthood, a judge must decide which two have that right and responsibility – but that could end soon. California State Sen. Mark Leno is pushing legislation to allow a child to have multiple parents. (via The Sacramento Bee)

Parents Daily News Roundup

Monday, June 4th, 2012

Premature Babies Have Higher Mental Illness Risk
Babies born prematurely have a much higher risk of developing severe mental disorders including psychosis, bipolar disorder and depression, according to a study to be published on Monday.

FDA Warns About Benzocaine in Baby Pain Gels
A new consumer update released by the Food and Drug Administration says babies and benzocaine–an ingredient found in many over the counter pain gels and liquids–don’t mix.

Facebook Mulls Letting Kids Under 13 Aboard
Facebook’s 13-and-up age cut-off could soon be a thing of the past.

Most New Moms Don’t Meet Own Breastfeeding Goals
Two thirds of new mothers who intended to breastfeed exclusively for several months or more didn’t meet their own goals in a new study.

Obama Writes Note to Excuse Boy from School
When a Minnesota fifth-grader skipped school to see his father introduce President Obama at a campaign event, he received the excuse note of a lifetime, personally written by the president himself.