Health-Medical-Fitness-Diet-zc

duminică, 2 septembrie 2012

Small but Deadly: Swallowing Button Batteries Can Be Fatal for Kids

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on battery injuries to kids found there were 14 battery-related deaths in the U.S. from 1995 to 2010 that happened to children ages four and under. Thirteen of those deaths happened between 2002 and 2010, and button batteries were implicated in 12 of the deaths.

Those deaths were part of a larger trend that found children’s battery-related injures have increased 2.5-fold from 1998 to 2010, going from 1,900 cases to 4,800. In 69 percent of cases the type of battery was reported, and more than half were linked to button batteries.

MORE: Going Back to School Just Got Scarier: Toxins Found in Supplies

Injuries were from batteries being swallowed, put up noses, and from ones that caused acid burns. Among all children, most were treated and released from the hospital, but 10 percent required a hospital stay. In almost 75 percent of cases the children were age four and younger.

Button batteries’ small size—some are less than an inch—is at the crux of the problem. Parents may not witness their child swallowing the items, and symptoms, which include fever, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain, can be tagged to countless other illnesses. Batteries that lodge in the esophagus can cause severe burns and bleeding.

“Because delays in diagnosis and treatment can lead to serious complications and death,” the report’s authors wrote, “children suspected of having ingested a battery should get prompt medical attention. It is also important to recognize that children might be reluctant or unable to say that they ingested a battery or gave one to a sibling.”

The report said some safety standards are in place, but more could be done. In 2008 federal safety standards for toys included making batteries unreachable by putting them, for instance, in screwed-in compartments.

MORE: Children as Young as Seven Self-Injure

The CDC suggested that added protection could come from batteries being enclosed in child-resistant packaging, and from securing button batteries in products à la kids’ toys.

Last year the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a similar warning about small magnets, often found in building sets. When those are swallowed in multiples or with other metal objects, they can magnetize through the intestinal wall, causing blockages, perforations or intestinal twisting.

The CPSC lists precautions parents can take to guard against battery swallowing, such as using tape to secure battery compartments children may have access to.

How do you keep batteries away from your kids? Let us know in the comments.

Related Stories on TakePart:

• Quick Study: To Sleep, Perchance to Snore Isn't Good for Kids

• Are Your Kids Safe at School? 5 Things Parents Should Know

• UNICEF Report: Vaccines Can Save Millions of Children

Jeannine Stein, a California native, wrote about health for the Los Angeles Times. In her pursuit of a healthy lifestyle she has taken countless fitness classes, hiked in Nepal, and has gotten in a boxing ring. Email Jeannine | TakePart.com

Tobacco smoke tied to flu complications in kids

Analyzing the records of more than 100 kids hospitalized with flu in New York state, researchers found those exposed to second-hand smoke were five times more likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit and required a 70 percent longer stay in the hospital, compared to the kids not exposed to smoke.

"People are being a bit complacent and thinking that because they don't see smoking as often…that it's not a problem anymore," said Dr. Karen Wilson, of Children's Hospital Colorado, in Aurora, who led the study. "But we still need to be vigilant about protecting kids from second-hand smoke."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, passive smoking causes ear infection, breathing problems and lung infections in children, and leads to the hospitalization of up to 15,000 children under the age of 18 months every year.

The new work is the first study to look at the effect of second-hand smoke on kids with influenza, however.

Wilson and her team looked at hospital records for 117 kids admitted for influenza to a New York hospital between 2002 and 2009.

Second-hand smoke exposure was reported on the charts of 40 percent of the kids - slightly lower than the 53 percent national exposure rate for kids under 11 estimated by the CDC in 2008.

During the seven-year study, researchers found that overall, 18 percent of the flu-affected kids were admitted to intensive care, and six percent needed to be intubated with a breathing tube. On average, kids stayed in the hospital for two days.

When Wilson and her team compared the kids who had been exposed to second-hand smoke to those who weren't, they found that 30 percent of smoke-exposed kids needed intensive care versus 10 percent of unexposed kids. Intubation was required for 13 percent of smoke-exposed kids, compared to one percent of those from a smoke-free home.

Hospital stays were up to 70 percent longer for smoke-exposed kids, with kids staying in for four days on average, compared with 2.4 days in non-exposed kids. If kids had a chronic illness as well as the flu, their length of stay increased to about 10 days, on average, if they had been breathing second-hand smoke, versus about three days in non-exposed sick kids.

"We've known that (second-hand smoke) is bad for children in a whole variety of ways," said Dr. Susan Coffin, who has studied flu complications in children at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "With this (study) we see that smoke exposure not only increases risk of hospitalization but it specifically makes the course of illness worse."

The small study, published in The Journal of Pediatrics, does have limitations. The authors note in their report, for instance, that children with severe illnesses may have been screened more frequently for smoke exposure, leading to an underestimate of how many kids were exposed to smoke.

Still, the findings do point to a need for better screening when kids with the flu are seen in the ER, researchers said.

"If you have a child who comes into the hospital and they are exposed to tobacco smoke, they have more risk of going on to develop more severe illness," Wilson told Reuters Health. Knowing that kids are at increased risk could help physicians make better treatment decisions, she added.

For Wilson, it's critical that children don't end up in the ER in the first place.

"This is a preventable cause of severe flu, and it's sad that children are in a position to be exposed even though these serious complications can occur," said Wilson.

"Obviously not smoking and protecting children from smoke won't stop them from getting influenza, but it may help it from becoming a severe illness or (preventing) complications that we sometimes see," she added.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/OFA4oS The Journal of Pediatrics, online August 6, 2012.

vineri, 31 august 2012

Cataract risk for kids on Vertex's cystic fibrosis pill: FDA

The FDA added information about the risk on Wednesday to the label for Kalydeco, the first drug designed to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis, a life-shortening genetic disease that impairs the lungs and digestive system and affects about 30,000 people in the United States.

Shares of the company slipped 1.0 percent to $53.55 in morning trading on Nasdaq.

Rats that were seven to 35 days old developed cataracts after being given a dose of Kalydeco that was about a tenth of the maximum recommended dose for people, the study showed. Cataracts are a clouding of the lens in the eye that can impair vision.

It was uncertain whether the finding in juvenile rats would apply to children, since people and rats have different eye development, the FDA said.

To ascertain the risks to children, the regulator has asked Vertex to conduct a clinical study of the risk of cataracts in kids who are already taking Kalydeco up to 11 years of age, when eye development is generally complete. The children must be followed for at least two years and get eye appointments every six months.

The FDA approved Kalydeco in January for patients from six years of age and older, who have a specific defective protein which causes cystic fibrosis in about 4 percent of patients.

Vertex still plans to expand use of the drug to patients as young as two, and is set to launch a study in that group later this year.

Company spokeswoman Dawn Kalmar said the company had received no complaints about cataracts from about 350 people who took the drug during clinical trials, or from more than 600 people who have been treated with it since January.

Kalydeco is Vertex's second product approved in the United States, after a hepatitis C treatment called Incivek.

(Reporting by Anna Yukhananov in Washington, additional reporting by Esha Dey in Bangalore; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Working Parents Spend Less Time on Children's Diet and Exercise, Study Finds

The study, which appeared in the current online issue the journal Economics and Human Biology, looked at close to 25,000 people, and found that working mothers spent 17 fewer minutes cooking, 10 fewer minutes eating with their kids, 12 fewer minutes playing with them and 37 fewer minutes tending to child care than their nonworking counterparts. This was true regardless of the mother's education, age or income, and the differences tended to be greatest for mothers with children younger than 5.

What about dads? The researchers found they weren't picking up the slack. Employed fathers devoted only 13 minutes a day to cooking for and playing with their children; nonworking fathers contributed 41 minutes to the same activities.

"It seems men are not doing much extra work," said John Cawley, the study's lead investigator.

Only about 15 percent of the fewer minutes spent in activities devoted to their children's health by working mothers appear to be offset by increases in time spent by husbands and partners. To make up for the time deficit, the data suggested that working mothers spent two more minutes per day than the stay-at-home moms purchasing prepackaged meals or ordering take out, an amount of time the researchers said was statistically significant.

Study Stirs Outrage

Previous studies have found that the children of working mothers tend to have a higher body mass index, or BMI, and higher obesity rates than children of nonworking mothers. For example, in 2003, the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics examined families with children 3 to 11 years old and found that 10 additional weekly hours of maternal employment over the course of the child's life increased their chances of becoming obese by 1.0 to 1.5 percentage points.

Cawley emphasizes that his investigation isn't intended to point the finger of blame at either parent. The aim of this latest study was to explore some of the reasons obesity may be tied to a mother's job status by tracking how much time both parents dedicated to their children's health.

Still, this type of data does tend to put working women on the defensive.

"Instead of giving her credit for giving birth to a healthy child, then frantically trying to also financially provide for her family, keep a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, educational books on the shelf, we make working moms feel bad about not having the time to make a healthy meal," said Antoinette Rodriguez, a financial adviser in Manhattan and mother of a 7-year-old daughter. "I get the sense that working fathers don't sweat the small stuff as much as moms. But then again, they're not judged for it."

Beth Anne Ballance, the mother of a 3-year-old son and a parenting blogger for Babble.com, owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News, agrees that the sort of findings reported in the study are often interpreted as a failure on the part of mothers more than fathers. "Despite the progress we've made as a society, despite women's equality, we still look to women as the main nurturers of children," she said.

But she believes studies like this one short change fathers too.

"He's a parent, not a babysitter, so he's just as responsible for choosing healthy foods and encouraging activity in our kid," she said.

Study Drawbacks The Cornell study didn't take into account the benefits of having a working mother in the family. For one thing, the financial advantages are obvious. And many believe working mothers provide positive role models for their children. Additionally, the data doesn't prove that employment alone is what drives the way mothers spend their time, nor did the study look at the quality of the ready-to-serve meals -- were they unhealthy prepackaged foods or low-fat organic fare, for example.

Cawley also points out that his research didn't provide any clues as to why fathers didn't pitch in more. It's possible the increased income from a mother's employment is used to hire nonfamily caregivers to handle some of these caregiving, household tasks. Another possible explanation is that fathers are unable or unwilling to increase time devoted to household tasks when their wives work.

"I don't like phrasing the question as whether working moms contribute to the problem. I think it's modern life that contributes to it," he said. "The question is what can families and schools do to promote child health given the changes in modern life?

What parents can do Cawley said, is get better educated about the nutritional content of restaurant and prepackaged foods, particularly if they don't believe they have the time to stop and prepare a meal from scratch.

"In order to make more informed decisions, consumers need to have nutrition and calorie information available where they buy their food." He said while also noting that federal health care reform rules will soon require chain- and fast-food restaurants nationwide to post the calorie counts of the foods they sell.

He also recommends asking schools to shoulder some of the responsibility. "Of course, we can't ask schools to do everything, but there are some obvious easy changes they can make, such as switching from easy-to-prepare popular foods in the cafeteria to healthier more nutritious foods, and providing more opportunities for kids to get physical activity throughout the day."

According to Cawley, the Institute of Medicine and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have urged those very same measures as part of a comprehensive change in school environments to combat childhood obesity.

miercuri, 29 august 2012

Ads may spur unhappy kids to embrace materialism

A number of studies in adults have suggested that unhappiness and materialism can create a vicious circle: People who are dissatisfied with their lives may think material possessions will make them happy; and when that fails, they become even more discontent.

Since we're living in a material world, there is concern about what that mindset could mean for kids' life satisfaction.

In the new study, researchers found that, unlike adults, materialistic 8- to 11-year-olds did not become less happy over time.

On the other hand, unhappy kids did become more consumed by material possessions - but only if they watched a lot of TV.

The findings, which appear in the journal Pediatrics, point to links among unhappiness, TV and materialism, though they cannot prove that TV is the villain.

The results do suggest, however, that the ads might "teach children that possessions are a way to increase happiness," study leader Suzanna J. Opree, a research associate at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, said in an email.

To help guard against that possibility, she suggested that parents help kids adopt a healthy skepticism toward consumer ads.

The findings are based on 466 Dutch children between the ages of eight and 11, who took an online survey two times, one year apart. On both occasions the kids answered questions about life satisfaction - how happy they were at home, at school, in their relationships and with themselves.

They also rated the importance of material possessions in their life, and the degree to which they thought those things could bring happiness or win them friends.

Overall, Opree's team found no evidence that materialistic kids became less happy by the second survey.

However, kids who were relatively unhappy in the first survey tended to become more materialistic over the next year - but only if they regularly watched TV shows popular with the preteen crowd.

The study points only to general patterns. And there are limitations; the researchers used kids' TV show viewing as a proxy for their exposure to ads, for example.

And in the big picture, according to Opree, TV ads would be just one factor that could affect a child's level of materialism. The same is true of life dissatisfaction, she said.

"Children's social environment - that is, family and peers - plays an important role," Opree said. "Values held by family members and peers are more likely to be adopted by the child."

No studies have been done to show whether parents' values win out over TV ads when it comes to kids' materialism.

But, Opree said, "what we do know is that parents can counteract advertising's influence."

Parents can help, she noted, by teaching kids to view ads with a critical eye, and to be skeptical of images that imply a product can make life better. Encouraging kids to see other sources of happiness - like "love, friendship and play" - might also help, according to Opree's team.

And why should parents worry about keeping kids off the path toward materialism?

It's true that in this study, kids' materialism did not seem to lead to unhappiness, Opree noted. But that was only the short-term outlook, she said.

"Previous studies conducted among adults suggest that it is very likely that children's materialism will lead to decreased life satisfaction later in life," Opree said.

Whether or not TV ads do affect some kids' materialism, experts already recommend that parents limit children's TV viewing and help them become savvy about advertising in general.

The American Academy of Pediatrics suggests that kids get no more than two hours of non-educational "screen time" - TV and computers - each day. The group also advises parents to keep TVs and computers out of their kids' bedrooms.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/PsIjET Pediatrics, online August 20, 2012.

Food stamps don't alter kids' sugary drink choices

When children from families participating in the federal assistance program for poor families, commonly known as food stamps, were compared to peers not in SNAP, there was no significant difference in how much milk, soda and fruit juice the kids drank.

The findings don't mean that banning the use of food stamps to buy sweetened beverages, as some have proposed, wouldn't cut down on their consumption.

But the results do suggest at least that having food stamps doesn't encourage families with kids to buy more unhealthy drinks, according to the report in the August issue of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

In short, "SNAP does not affect beverage consumption among low-income children," said Meenakshi Fernandes, the study's author and a senior analyst at the health and policy research organization Abt Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

SNAP provides - on average - about $284 per month for people with low incomes to use at grocery stores on food. Purchases of alcohol, tobacco and other non-food items are not permitted.

In 2010, New York City attempted to add sugary drinks to the banned-items list, arguing that sweetened drinks are helping to spur the obesity epidemic, which disproportionately affects poorer households (see Reuters story of October 8, 2010 at http://reut.rs/NaVBqA).

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, denied the city permission to implement its proposed pilot project in 2011.

That, however, has not stopped other proposals for limiting soda consumption on public health grounds.

One approach is to impose an additional tax on sugary drinks, such as that passed by the city of El Monte, California late last month. (see Reuters story of July 27, 2012.).

In New York City, the Mayor recently proposed limiting the size of drink containers that can be sold, to cut down on "super-sized" beverage purchases.

According to Fernandes, approximately one fifth of American homes participate in SNAP and children live in more than half of those homes, so the question of whether the program influences food and drink choices interested her.

To find out, she used information from a national survey that asked fifth and eighth grade students how many times a week they drank certain beverages.

Ultimately, a sample group of 3,126 kids, all of whom lived in homes with incomes less than $75,000 were surveyed in 2004 and 2007. About one in five of those children were SNAP participants.

Overall, Fernandes found that kids from SNAP households drank sugary drinks slightly less than those who were not in the program, and drank fruit juice and milk slightly more. The differences were so small, though, they could have been due to chance.

Among eight-graders, for instance, kids overall reported drinking milk eight times a week, soft drinks six times a week and fruit juice 5.6 times a week. Those in the SNAP program, on average, reported 0.6 fewer episodes of soft drink consumption and 0.51 more episodes of milk consumption.

Anne Barnhill, a lecturer in the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, told Reuters Health that although she thinks the study is great, it still does not answer the question of whether telling people they cannot buy soda through SNAP would reduce sugary drink consumption.

Barnhill, who supported New York City's 2010 proposal, said more research is needed into that topic along with how incentive programs work, such as the ability to buy fruits and vegetables at a discounted price.

"What we really want to do is increase the consumption of healthy food and decrease the consumption of unhealthy food," she said.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QQXKtb Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, online June 6, 2012.

Study: Junk food laws may help curb kids' obesity

The results come from the first large national look at the effectiveness of the state laws over time. They are not a slam-dunk, and even obesity experts who praised the study acknowledge the measures are a political hot potato, smacking of a "nanny state" and opposed by industry and cash-strapped schools relying on food processors' money.

But if the laws have even a tiny effect, "what are the downsides of improving the food environment for children today?" asked Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital. "You can't get much worse than it already is."

Children in the study gained less weight from fifth through eighth grades if they lived in states with strong, consistent laws versus no laws governing snacks available in schools. For example, kids who were 5 feet tall and 100 pounds gained on average 2.2 fewer pounds if they lived in states with strong laws in the three years studied.

Also, children who were overweight or obese in fifth grade were more likely to reach a healthy weight by eighth grade if they lived in states with the strongest laws.

The effects weren't huge, and the study isn't proof that the laws influenced kids' weight. But the results raised optimism among obesity researchers and public health experts who generally applaud strong laws to get junk food out of schools.

"This is the first real evidence that the laws are likely to have an impact," said Dr. Virginia Stallings, director of the nutrition center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Stallings chaired an Institute of Medicine panel that urged standards for making snack foods and drinks sold in schools more healthful but was not involved in the new research.

The authors of the study, released online Monday in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed data on 6,300 students in 40 states. Their heights and weights were measured in spring 2004, when they were finishing fifth grade and soon to enter middle school, and in 2007, during the spring of eighth grade.

The researchers also examined several databases of state laws on school nutrition during the same time. The states were not identified in the study because of database license restrictions that protect the students' confidentiality, the authors said.

The laws governed food and drinks sold in public school vending machines and school stores, outside of mealtime. Laws were considered strong if they included specific nutrition requirements, such as limits on sugar and fats. Laws were rated weak if the requirements were vague and merely urged sales of "healthy" food without specifics.

The results show that for these laws to be effective, they need to be consistently strong in all grades, said lead author Daniel Taber, a health policy researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

In late 2003, 27 of the states studied had no relevant laws affecting middle-schoolers, seven had weak laws and six had strong laws. Several states and school districts enacted tougher laws affecting middle-schoolers and younger kids during the next few years as national concern rose over obesity rates.

Recent data suggest that almost 20 percent of elementary school children nationwide are obese, and the rate among teens is only slightly lower.

In states with consistently strong laws in elementary and middle school, almost 39 percent of fifth-graders were overweight when the study began. That fell to 34 percent in eighth grade. Also, almost 21 percent of fifth-graders were obese, declining to about 18 percent in the eighth grade.

In states with no relevant laws, almost 37 percent of fifth-graders were overweight and 21 percent were obese, and those numbers barely budged by eighth grade.

Boston University statistician Mark Glickman said the study design makes it difficult to reach any convincing conclusions. It's possible, for example, that stronger laws might be more prevalent in Democratic-leaning states with better-educated residents, and less obesity. But the study authors said they found stronger laws in states that had high levels of obesity.

The authors accounted for gender, race, income and school location.

Taber noted that several Southern states have been the most aggressive at targeting school junk food, "probably because they have the highest rates of obesity."

Ludwig, the Boston obesity specialist, praised the researchers for trying to "tackle a complicated question."

"The challenge is that there are a great many factors that coalesce to influence body weight," Ludwig said. "Disentangling these influences and looking at the independent effects of just one is a methodological nightmare."

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AP Medical Writer Lindsey Tanner can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/LindseyTanner