Childhood eczema tied to asthma risk later

Children with the allergic skin condition eczema are at increased risk of developing asthma well into adulthood, according to a decades-long study.Australian researchers found that among nearly 8,600 study participants followed from the age of 7, those who'd had childhood eczema were roughly twice as likely to develop asthma by middle-age.

It's not clear whether the eczema directly contributed to asthma development in these cases. However, the findings do suggest a cause-and-effect relationship between the two conditions, according to the researchers, led by Dr. John A. Burgess of the University of Melbourne.

They report the results in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

The findings come from a study that began in 1968, when parents of 8,583 7-year-old children in Tasmania were surveyed about their children's health. The children also had a medical exam. At that time, 769 were found to have eczema.

The researchers found that children with eczema were twice as likely as their peers to develop asthma as teenagers, and 63 percent more likely to develop the lung condition as adults.

Other researchers have noted a phenomenon dubbed the "atopic march," which refers to the sequential development of eczema, followed by nasal allergies and finally asthma. The current findings, Burgess and his colleagues write, suggest that this march continues on well past childhood.

It's also possible that eczema directly contributes to asthma development, the researchers say. One theory is that certain immune system cells, primed for an allergic response, might migrate from an eczema patient's skin to tissue of the airways. That could make their airways more likely to inflame in response to an inhaled allergen, leading to asthma symptoms.

"Our data suggest that a causal link is possible," Burgess told Reuters Health.

"If in fact the link was causal," he added, "then aggressive treatment of childhood eczema aimed at really tight control of that disease might have an impact on the development of asthma in adolescence and in adult life."

SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, August 2008.

Childhood Dairy Intake Boosts Bone Health Later On

Having two or more servings of dairy products a day starting as a preschooler may lead to better bone health as an adolescent, a new report says.The study, expected to be published in The Journal of Pediatrics, found higher levels of bone mineral content and bone density in teens who consumed dairy at least twice a day since the ages of 3 to 5. These adolescents' average bone mineral content was 175 grams higher than adolescents who had consumed less than two dairy servings a day, even after researchers adjusted the results for factors that affect normal bone development, such as the child's growth, body size, and activity level.

The study highlights the significant role dairy plays in childhood as "a key source of proteins, calcium, and other micronutrients including phosphorus and vitamin D," study researcher Lynn Moore, of Boston University School of Medicine, said in a news release issued by the journal.

The researchers also found that children who combined their 2 or more servings of dairy with 4 ounces of meat or other nondairy protein during a day had bone mineral contents more than 300 grams higher than those children with lower intakes of both dairy and other proteins.

The findings come from analyzing data and family food diaries from the Framingham Children's Study, which gathered information from 106 children, 3 to 5 years of age at the beginning of the study, over a 12-year period. Information from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was also used to determine the children's average daily intake of dairy and other foods.

Kids' Obesity Linked to Ear Infections

Damage caused by chronic ear infections in children may alter their sense of taste, making fatty and sweet foods more desirable and increasing the risk of obesity.That's the conclusion of four new studies presented Thursday at the American Psychological Association's annual meeting in Boston.

In the first study, Kathleen Daly, a professor of otolaryngology at the University of Minnesota, found that "middle ear nerve damage may play a role in affecting taste in children with recurrent ear infections or chronic ear disease who get [drainage] tubes. This damage may increase intake of fattening foods."

For the study, Daly's team followed children from birth to 2 years of age who had been treated with tubes for ear infections.

"There was a trend, but not significant, for recurrent ear infection to lead to overweight," Daly said. "Other studies have reported a similar relationship between ear infections and overweight. We did not find evidence for the reverse hypothesis: larger and heavier children were more prone to ear infections and tubes than smaller and lighter children."

In the second study, led by John Hayes of Brown University, researchers found that among 110 middle-aged women with a sense of taste consistent with nerve damage, those who preferred sweet and high-fat foods tended to have larger waists.

"Surprisingly, we found that the single best predictor of body weight was not how much saturated fat they took in and not how often they ate high-fat foods, but was how much they liked high-fat and sweet foods," Hayes said.

Hayes noted that taste can vary genetically, but also through exposure to environmental changes. "Particularly with damage to the taste system and we think this happens from ear infections," he said.

Another study by Hayes' group found that preschoolers with a history of severe ear infections ate fewer vegetables, more sweets and tended to be heavier.

In the third study presented Thursday, led by Howard Hoffman, an epidemiologist at the U.S. National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, researchers found that removing the tonsils had an effect on whether children would be overweight.

"Taste does have an impact on selection of food and diet," Hoffman said. "A tonsillectomy may damage one of the nerves that carry taste information. In addition, ear infections can also alter taste. Altering taste does have an effect on the preferences for food," he said.

Hoffman's team reexamined data on 13,887 children who took part in the National Health Examination surveys during the 1960s. The researchers found that children who had had their tonsils removed were at greater risk of being overweight. Among children aged 6 to 11 who'd had a tonsillectomy, they were 40 percent more likely to be overweight at the time of the survey, compared with children who did not have a tonsillectomy.

What's more, teenage girls who'd had a tonsillectomy were 30 percent more likely to be overweight, the researchers found. Hoffman noted that tonsillectomies were a common treatment back in the 60s for chronic ear infections, which can alter the taste buds and affect eating habits.

"This data is not conclusive, but it's suggestive," he said.

In the final study, Linda Bartoshuk, of the University of Florida College of Dentistry, and colleagues collected data on 6,584 people who attended a lecture series. These men and women, between 16 and 92 years old, were asked about their history of ear infections. The researchers found that those with a history of moderate to severe ear infections were 62 percent more likely to be obese.

Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Yale University School of Medicine Prevention Research Center, thinks that alteration in taste only plays a small part in the overall obesity epidemic in the United States.

"It certainly makes sense that variations in taste, due to many factors including a history of ear infections, could influence food preferences, total food intake and weight," he said.

However, despite variation in taste perception, variation in dietary preference, and variation in the history of ear infections, researchers have projections forecasting all but universal obesity among U.S .adults within several decades should current trends persist, Katz noted.

"So while the link between taste buds and vulnerability to obesity is worthy of further exploration, the simple fact is that the entire population is vulnerable to obesity," Katz said. "The major causes of the obesity epidemic reside in the 'obesigenic' environment, rather than on our tongues."

Men More Likely Than Women to Adopt Children

American men ages 18 to 44 are more than twice as likely as women in the same age group to have adopted a child, a new federal report says.The report uses data from the 2002 National Survey of Family Growth, which showed that more than 1.2 million men and 613,000 women had adopted children. The exact reasons why more men adopt than women aren't outlined in the report, but it may be partly due to men getting married and adopting their spouse's children from a previous relationship, the report said.

The report found that:

* Among people who've ever been married, men were more than 2.5 times as likely as women to have adopted -- 3.8 percent vs. 1.4 percent. Overall, 2.3 percent of all men had adopted a child.
* More than one in four women ages 40 to 44 who had ever used infertility services had adopted a child.
* Never-married adults ages 18 to 44 were significantly less likely to have adopted a child compared to those who were currently married. About 100,000 never-married women and 73,000 never-married men had adopted a child.
* Compared with non-Hispanic white women, Hispanic and non-Hispanic black women were more likely to be currently seeking to adopt a child.

The report was released Thursday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center on Health Statistics.

Fever-related seizures in children rarely fatal

Although fever-related seizures can prove fatal for some children, such deaths are nonetheless extremely rare, a large study from Denmark shows.

The findings, reported in Saturday's issue of The Lancet medical journal, should be reassuring for parents, researchers say.

About 2 percent to 5 percent of children younger than 5 will suffer at least one febrile seizure -- generalized convulsions caused by elevated body temperature. But studies on the condition have been too small to estimate how many children actually die from fever-related seizures.

For the new study, Dr. Mogens Vestergaard, from Aarhus University in Denmark, and colleagues analyzed data on nearly 1.7 million children born in Denmark between 1977 and 2004. They identified 8,172 children who died during the study period, including 232 deaths among more than 55,000 children with a history of febrile seizure.

Overall, the researchers found, children who suffered a febrile seizure were nearly twice as likely as children in the general population to die during the two years following the seizure. Beyond that point, there was no increased risk.

And while the short-term risk of death was elevated, the actual number of children who died was extremely low, Vestergaard's team stresses. Over two years, they say, there would be two deaths per 1,500 children with febrile seizures, versus one death per 1,500 children in the general population.

Moreover, the study found, much depends on the type of febrile seizure.

Children who suffered a "simple" seizure -- lasting no more than 15 minutes, without recurrence in 24 hours -- had a death rate similar to children in the general population.

Instead, the risk was linked specifically to so-called complex seizures, which are longer-lasting or arise again within 24 hours; often, deaths among these children were related to pre-existing neurological abnormalities.

The findings seem to "refute, for infants and children who have simple febrile seizures, the idea of a shared cause between febrile seizures and sudden death," Dr. Maitreyi Mazumdar, from Children's Hospital Boston, writes in a related editorial.

At the same time, she adds, the results reinforce the message that children with complex seizures and neurologic abnormalities should be followed closely by their doctors.

SOURCE: Lancet August 9, 2008.

Spending time outdoors good for kids' eyes

Parents now have another reason to shoo their kids outdoors to play, along with making sure they get enough fresh air and exercise. In a study, Australian researchers found evidence that children who spent the most time outdoors were the least likely to suffer from myopia, also called nearsightedness or shortsightedness"Our evidence suggests that the key factor is being outdoors, and that it does not matter if that time is spent in having a picnic or in playing sport," Dr. Kathryn A. Rose told Reuters Health. "Both will protect a child's eyes from growing excessively, which is the major cause of myopia."

Myopia has become increasingly common in recent decades, with more than 80 percent of people in some highly-educated groups being nearsighted, Rose of the University of Sydney and her colleagues point out in the journal Ophthalmology. Work that requires a person to focus on something close up -- for example reading -- has been proposed to cause nearsightedness, they add.

To investigate how viewing activities at various distances might influence myopia risk, the researchers looked at 1,765 six-year-olds and 2,367 12-year-olds participating in the Sydney Myopia Study. Just 1.5 percent of the six-year-olds were myopic, but 12.8 percent of the older children were. Both age groups spent about 2.3 hours outside each day, on average.

Time spent outside had no significant relationship to myopia prevalence among the younger children, nor did the amount of close work they did.

But among the 12-year-olds, those who spent more than 2.8 hours outside every day were less likely to be myopic than their peers who spent more of their time indoors. Children who spent less than 1.6 hours outdoors every day and more than 3.1 hours in near-work activity had double to triple the likelihood of being nearsighted compared to kids who spent the most time outside and the least time in close-up work.

"We have not yet established why being outside is protective," Rose said. "But a likely candidate is the high levels of light experienced outside compared to inside. Studies in animals suggest that retinal dopamine is released in response to light, and dopamine is known to be able to block eye growth." Myopia is caused when the eyeball grows too long.

The researcher offers the following advice to parents: "Try to ensure that your children spend time outside because we have evidence that the more time they spend outdoors, the less likely they are to develop myopia. This is true, even if they are also doing a lot of close work such as reading and studying." But also, she adds, parents should be sure their kids are wearing hats and sunscreen.

SOURCE: Ophthalmology, August 2008.

Some Weight-Loss Drugs Might Disrupt Brain Growth in Kids

Wed May 7, 11:46 PM ET

WEDNESDAY, May 7 (HealthDay News) -- A new class of weight-loss drugs that suppresses appetite by blocking cannabinoid receptors in the brain should be used with caution in children, U.S. scientists report.
ADVERTISEMENT

In research with mice, they found this class of drugs also suppresses the adaptive rewiring of the brain necessary for neural development in young animals. The findings are in the May 8 issue of Neuron.

One such drug is rimonabant (Acomplia), which was developed by Sanofi-Aventis and is awaiting approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Other pharmaceutical companies are developing similar drugs.

In this study, researchers concluded that a cannabinoid receptor-blocking drug called AM 251 affected experience-dependent cortical plasticity in the brains of juvenile mice. This plasticity is the experience-prompted adaptive rewiring of the brain that plays an critical role in the neural development of young animals.

"Our finding of a profound disruption of cortical plasticity in juvenile mice treated with AM 251 suggests caution is advised in the use of such compounds in children," wrote Mark F. Bear and his colleagues, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Mass.

Mom's high normal blood sugar risky: study

By Karla Gale Thu May 8, 8:54 AM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Pregnant women who have blood sugar levels above normal but below those signaling full-blown diabetes are more likely than women with lower blood sugar levels to experience several adverse pregnancy outcomes, new research indicates.

It is well known that high blood sugar levels indicative of the diabetes that occurs during pregnancy present risks for expectant mothers and their infants. The current study is believed to be the first to show that higher blood sugar levels -- not high enough to be considered diabetes -- also convey these increased risks.

In a study of nearly 24,000 pregnant women who had their blood sugar levels tested between 24 and 32 weeks of pregnancy, researchers found that the higher the mother's blood sugar level, the greater the chances that she would require Caesarean delivery and deliver an abnormally large baby.

Dr. Boyd E. Metzger from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, and colleagues also found that the higher the mother's blood sugar levels, the more likely the women were to develop a potentially serious condition called preeclampsia marked by a spike in blood pressure and the more likely their infants were to be born prematurely, and to experience shoulder dystocia -- a condition in which an infant's shoulder becomes lodged inside the mother's body, effectively halting the birth process.

"These relationships are continuous and generally increase incrementally over the range of blood (sugar) levels we saw in the study," Metzger noted in a statement.

The question remains, Metzger told Reuters Health, "at what level of risk should we intervene? That is a big question that can't be addressed by this research."

He noted that a meeting to discuss these issues is scheduled next month immediately following the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association.

SOURCE: The New England Journal of Medicine, May 8, 2008.

Cool kids can help others avoid smoking: study

By Michael Kahn Thu May 8, 7:17 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Getting the cool kids to talk to their peers about the dangers of smoking cut the number of young people who started using cigarettes in one study by nearly 25 percent, British researchers said on Friday.

The study published in the journal Lancet took a different approach than most tobacco cessation programs aimed at youths by asking students to nominate others they viewed as influential or leaders to spread the anti-smoking message.

This peer selection proved more effective than conventional programs and greatly reduced the number of students likely to start smoking, the researchers said.

"The important thing this shows is that young people can help each other from taking up the addictive habit of smoking," said Rona Campbell, a health researcher at the University of Bristol who helped lead the study.

"If the program was taken up widely it could cut the recruitment of new smokers significantly."

Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the world, causing heart disease, several kinds of cancer, emphysema and other ailments. Both smokers and those who have to breathe their smoke are affected.

Worldwide an estimated 10 percent of students aged 13- to 15-years old smoke cigarettes, with the highest rates in European countries at 19 percent, according to the Global Tobacco Surveillance System.

The British study involved nearly 11,000 students aged 12 to 13 in 59 schools across western England and Wales. Of these, 29 schools were randomly selected to continue normal anti-smoking programs and the rest tried the new approach.

The researchers asked them to nominate influential students and then invited these popular students to take part in a training program about the risks of smoking and benefits of not starting.

Children who already smoked could take part as leaders so long as they agreed to try to quit. The leaders spread the information gained in the training informally during everyday conversations and interactions with others.

The results were significant. Students in the peer selection group were 23 percent less likely to start smoking after one year and 15 percent less likely after two years than young people in schools with traditional cessation programs.

This would translate into a potential reduction of 43,000 14- to 15-year olds who take up smoking each year, Campbell said in a telephone interview.

Studies also show the damage done by smoking takes decades to accumulate, so people who start young have more health risks later.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Mary Gabriel)

China hails doctor for raising child virus alarm

BEIJING (Reuters) - A deadly strain of hand, foot and mouth disease has killed two more children in China, bringing the death toll in recent weeks to 32, state media said on Friday, as it praised a doctor who alerted authorities to the epidemic.

An eight-month-old girl and a boy aged one and a half, who both died in southern China, were the latest victims of an outbreak international experts have warned has yet to peak.

Hand, foot and mouth is a common childhood illness, but in the current outbreak, has been linked with enterovirus 71 (EV71) which can cause a severe form of the disease characterized by high fever, paralysis and meningitis.

The girl died early Monday morning in Guangdong province, which has registered four deaths from EV71, after emergency treatment failed, Xinhua said.

The boy, from the neighboring Guangxi region, started running a fever and coughing on Saturday but his parents didn't take him to hospital until Tuesday, when he fell into a coma. Doctors could not save him and he became Guangxi's second victim.

A cluster of EV71 cases in Fuyang in the central province of Anhui in March saw 22 deaths. Some 104 patients remain in critical condition across the province, official media has said.

The outbreak was not made public until late April, triggering memories of the deadly SARS epidemic that crippled China in 2003 and provoking calls for Fuyang officials to be sacked.

The World Health Organisation has said the delay was not because of any cover-up, but was due to problems local doctors faced trying to identify the illness.

China has since issued a nationwide alert, closing kindergartens and sending officials to visit nurseries and primary schools and educate staff on hygiene and prevention.

A U.S. health official offered to assist China in curbing the outbreak, and U.S. Health Secretary Michael Leavitt is to visit Beijing next week, Xinhua reported.

"We are willing to help China in any way possible with this issue," it quoted William Steiger, head of the Office of Global Health Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health, as saying.

State media Friday was filled with praise for a doctor who called in experts after she was baffled by the deaths of several children that colleagues insisted were just suffering severe colds or flu.

The official People's Daily carried a tribute with the headline "We salute you, Fuyang's Liu Xiaolin," comparing Liu to a doctor who helped lead the fight against the deadly SARS virus.

"We have no way to count how many children were treated and cured because of Liu Xiaolin's responsibility and steadfastness; there is also no way to calculate how many families avoided the epidemic because of her sharpness and courage," it said.

Liu had previously helped uncover a baby milk scandal, when fake formula made without key nutrients caused the death by malnutrition of several children.

(Reporting by Emma Graham-Harrison and Lindsay Beck; Editing by Nick Macfie)