Children

An environment in which family members support one another and express their feelings can reduce the effects of social deprivation on cognitive ability and development among adopted children, suggests a small study by researchers at the National Institutes of Health. In contrast, rule-driven households where family members are in conflict may increase an adopted child’s

Like a good story, feeding has a beginning, a middle and an end. It begins with appetite prompting the search for food, continues with eating the food and it ends when satiation hits and the consumption of food is stopped. At Baylor College of Medicine, Dr. Qi Wu, Dr. Yong Han and their colleagues have

UC San Francisco researchers have found a way to double doctors’ accuracy in detecting the vast majority of complex fetal heart defects in utero – when interventions could either correct them or greatly improve a child’s chance of survival – by combining routine ultrasound imaging with machine-learning computer tools. The team, led by UCSF cardiologist

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic turned the lives of many all over the world upside down. Nowhere has this been more obvious than the interactions between parents and children, beginning during pregnancy, over the past year of the pandemic. A new study, by a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge, The Cambridge

Human breastmilk has been found to be one of the best sources of nutrition for infant health and development while also aiding the maturation of the immune system. This is significant as when a pregnant mother experiences an infection, her antibody response can be transferred to the milk, with specific antibodies reportedly being found in

While the earlier waves of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic relatively spared children, some of the affected children have developed a systemic inflammatory condition, with occasionally fatal outcomes. Called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), its pathogenesis and risk factors are the subject of a new study on the medRxiv* preprint server. MIS-C MIS-C

Research led by Antonio M. Quispe of Centro de Investigación en Bioingeniería, Universidad de Ingeniería y Tecnología in Peru examined infection rates in Iquitos, Peru at different time points in 2020. Seroprevalence was found to be 70% in the population, which indicates that most people in the area were infected at some point and developed

Follow-up data from the landmark SPRINT study of the effect of high blood pressure on cardiovascular disease have confirmed that aggressive blood pressure management — lowering systolic blood pressure to less than 120 mm Hg — dramatically reduces the risk of heart disease, stroke, and death from these diseases, as well as death from all

May 21 2021 Researchers from The University of Western Australia have discovered children can successfully comprehend and create novel human communication systems. Image Credit: The University of Western Australia The study, published in Child Development, could help shed light on how new languages are created. Related Stories A team from UWA’s School of Psychological Science

New research from BYU published in PLOS Medicine found that providing medical patients with social support leads to an increased chance of survival and elongation of life. Such findings come at a critical time as doctors and healthcare professionals seek new ways to improve care and decrease mortality. “The premise of the research is that

Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt has launched a study to determine the impact of a predictive model for identifying pediatric patients at risk for developing blood clots or venous thromboembolisms (VTEs). The study uses advanced predictive analytics to inform medical teams of patients at risk for blood clots before they happen. Hospital-associated blood

A new Dartmouth-led study, published this week in the journal Pediatrics, has found that the disproportionate use of premiums within child-targeted TV advertising for children’s fast-food meals is deceptive. The researchers examined thousands of advertisements from 11 fast-food restaurants, but one company–McDonald’s–accounted for nearly all the airtime and, as a result, the findings. The researchers

May 17 2021 There’s been a fivefold rise in the number of young children requiring treatment after having swallowed a magnet over the past 5 years in the UK, suggests data from specialist doctors in a letter published online in the Archives of Disease in Childhood. Nearly half of these children required surgery to remove

A groundbreaking study led by engineering and medical researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities shows how engineered immune cells used in new cancer therapies can overcome physical barriers to allow a patient’s own immune system to fight tumors. The research could improve cancer therapies in the future for millions of people worldwide. The

Q: The federal government approved the Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds. What does this mean for my child? Extending the emergency use of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to preteens and young adolescents adds nearly 17 million more Americans to the pool of those eligible to be immunized against covid-19, helping to build a vaccinated population

There is no long-term benefit to surgically placing tympanostomy tubes in a young child’s ears to reduce the rate of recurrent ear infections during the ensuing two years compared with giving oral antibiotics to treat ear infections, a randomized trial led by UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh and University of Pittsburgh pediatrician-scientists determined. The trial

Chris Hodges, the principal of Gaylord High School in Otsego County, Michigan, never thought he’d be a contact tracer. “I definitely thought, you know, ‘Why — why am I doing this?'” he said with a laugh. “That’s not what I went to school for.” In what has become a regular part of his school day,

Your local city park may be improving your health, according to a new paper led by Stanford University researchers. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lays out how access to nature increases people’s physical activity – and therefore overall health – in cities. Lack of physical activity in the U.S.

An experimental form of gene therapy developed by a team of researchers from UCLA and Great Ormond Street Hospital in London has successfully treated 48 of 50 children born with a rare and deadly inherited disorder that leaves them without an immune system. Severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency, or ADA-SCID, is caused

Children ages two to five who have the most common form of cystic fibrosis (CF), caused by two copies of the F508 gene mutation, have not had any modulator treatments available to them until recently. A new study authored by researchers at Children’s Hospital Colorado and published May 6, 2021, in Lancet Respiratory Medicine shows

Neonatal hypothermia — which occurs when an infant’s core body temperature falls below the normal range needed to maintain health — contributes to approximately one million deaths each year, and countless cases of stunted growth, almost exclusively in low- and middle-income countries. To address this common but preventable condition, researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, engineers

A new University of Iowa study challenges the idea that gray matter (the neurons that form the cerebral cortex) is more important than white matter (the myelin covered axons that physically connect neuronal regions) when it comes to cognitive health and function. The findings may help neurologists better predict the long-term effects of strokes and

A state-of-the-art in-utero procedure allows surgeons to correct a birth defect on developing babies inside the womb. But operating on a mother and her unborn child at the same time can be challenging and unpredictable. To give their world-class surgeons even more information ahead of surgery, Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies

A biomedical research company founded by a University of Alabama at Birmingham physician-scientist has received $3 million in seed funding. ResBiotic Inc. — spun off from UAB last year — will use the money to develop and commercialize groundbreaking probiotic formulations for lung health, says founder C. Vivek Lal, M.D., an associate professor in the

Stress levels of moms with preschoolers soared during the pandemic, with twice as many of the mothers reporting they lost sleep during the COVID-19 outbreak than before it. “Moms of young children are already less likely to get the recommended amount of sleep and physical activity than women who don’t have children. These shortfalls could

A new study led by a University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researcher underscores the importance of screening adolescents with hearing loss for depression and anxiety. Mental health issues are often overlooked in treating patients with chronic health conditions such as hearing loss. We need to develop and implement a universal screening protocol for

The research on the short and long-term effects of COVID-19 disease is ongoing. Still, scientists have found severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) affects the brain causing loss of smell and taste, dizziness, muscle pain, fatigue, and other cognitive impairments. However, it remained unknown why certain people developed neurological symptoms while others did not.

Doctors treating babies born with Turner syndrome need to look for heart rhythm abnormalities, in addition to the usual heart problems of high blood pressure or left-sided structural heart defects, according to Meena Bolourchi, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Boston University School of Medicine. Turner syndrome occurs in one out of 2,500 live female