Recently in Child Health Category

According to this HealthDay story, a study published in the journal Child Development found:

The children who attended responsive and engaging high-quality preschool programs were found to exhibit less aggression and rule-breaking behavior by the time they entered middle childhood (ages 7 to 11), according to the report.

Diagnosing autism in children can be a complicated process, involving a series of tests. But could autism be diagnosed earlier in life and with less uncertainty by using a simple biological test to detect the condition? According to this article in the UK Daily Mail, researchers believe they can develop a urine test for autism based on distinct gastrointestinal factors impacting autistic individuals. An excerpt:

"The findings, published tomorrow in the Journal of Proteome Research, suggest that ultimately a urine test will be able to detect autism in infants.

People with autism are known to suffer from gastrointestinal disorders and have a different make-up of bacteria in their guts from non-autistic people. The exact biological significance of gastrointestinal disorders in the development of autism is unknown.

The distinctive urinary metabolic fingerprint for autism identified by the the study, from Imperial College London and the University of South Australia, could form the basis of a non-invasive test that might help diagnose autism earlier."

The Swedish study found that social factors like living with a single parent, explained half the variation in the percentage of kids studied on ADHD medicines. Genetics also is a factor. From the article by AFP:

Children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder who are given stimulant drug treatments performed better on standardized tests than ADHD students not taking the medicines, according to a story reported here. An excerpt:

"We're not promoting drugs as the answer. But we did find medication does improve standardized math and reading scores in the long term," said Richard Scheffler of the University of California, Berkeley, one of the researchers.

"Our study found that the children with ADHD who used the medication were several months ahead of their nonmedicated peers in reading and math, which is significant because early progress in school is critical to ongoing academic success," Scheffler said.

Scheffler said children with ADHD who are left untreated do poorly in school, with higher dropout rates and more substance abuse, arrests and social isolation.

Researchers in Britain produced a study showing that students who get more hours of physical activity at home just cut back exercise at home, meaning the effects are a washout. An excerpt from a UPI story on the study:

Scheduling more physical education time in school does not mean children will become more fit, say researchers in Britain. The researchers, who presented their findings at the European Congress on Obesity in Amsterdam, said students who got more exercise at school compensated by doing less at home, and those who got little gym at school made up for it by being more active at home.

What do you think of this? Do you think this applies to American children? I imagine obesity rates differ between both countries, but I have no data to prove that. Curious to hear your thoughts.

Researchers say between 7 and 15 percent of children they studied had what they call "written-language disorder," which they say is different from dyslexia and attention-deficit disorder, according to this article on Forbes.com. An excerpt:

Education specialists define written-language disorder as the inability to write near the level expected based on a person's age, intelligence and education. People who suffer from the condition may have problems with such skills as grammar, spelling, paragraph organization and handwriting, Katusic said. For the new study, (researchers) looked at the school and medical records of 5,718 students in Rochester, Minn. The researchers found that between 6.9 percent and 14.7 percent of the children had the condition, depending on the formula used.

Have any of the readers of this blog heard about such a disorder? Anyone have an opinion about it? Feel free to make comments to this post.

According to an article in the UK Times, a study of American kids ages 8 to 18 found that one in 10 were "pathologically addicted" to video games. An excerpt:

Some young gamers show at least six symptoms of gambling addiction, such as lying to family and friends about how much they play games, using the games to escape their problems and becoming restless or irritable when they stop playing. They may also skip homework to play games or spend too much time playing and do poorly in school, the study shows.

Douglas Gentile, director of the National Institute on Media and the Family at Iowa State University, where the study was carried out, said in his report: "The present study was designed to demonstrate whether pathological gaming is an issue that merits further attention. With almost one out of 10 youth gamers demonstrating real-world problems because of their gaming, we can conclude that it does."

So what's your take on this? Are video games addicted? Is this modern-day distraction any worse than students' old-fashioned attachment to talking on the phone or watching TV?

This Houston Chronicle story explores a new trend that is getting increased media attention: Teen "sexting," or teens sending sexually explicit message or photos via cell phone, some of which find their way onto the Internet where they can be viewed by anyone. Although some students are showing a casual attitude, parents are upset. An excerpt:

As more adults learn about the phenomenon, they are using a variety of tools to force kids to stop. At one end of the spectrum are parental lectures and regular phone inspections. At the other end, prosecutors in half a dozen states along the East Coast and in the Midwest are socking it to minors with pornography and obscenity charges. A few prosecutors want the most egregious sexters registered as sex offenders.

Eric Devlin, chief of the child exploitation section of the Harris County District Attorney's Office, says he gets calls about sexting every week and considers each case individually. If the sexting seems to be confined to teens exhibiting poor judgment or crying for attention, he contacts their parents and talks to them frankly.

According to this newspaper article, a recent study found that pregnant women taking even "modest amounts of Vitamin E can dramatically increase the risk of heart defects in babies." But one expert in the article cautions against overreacting to the study, saying that Vitamin E is essential to health. An excerpt:

Expectant mothers who consume only three-quarters of the recommended daily amount of the vitamin, either through food or supplements, have up to nine times the risk that their child will be born suffering a heart abnormality, a study showed.

The same link between heart damage and vitamin E was seen in women who had taken similar levels of the vitamin in the month preceding conception. Leading obstetricians said women should avoid vitamin E supplements if they are planning to conceive or are pregnant. Last night leading obstetricians said women should avoid vitamin E supplements if they are planning to conceive or are pregnant. Vitamin E, found in nuts, seeds, vegetable oils and eggs, is an antioxidant and is thought to help skin stay healthy and ease the misery of premenstrual syndrome.

A study by American researchers has concluded that mothers exposed to air pollution - such as that from traffic in nearby roads - are more likely to have underweight babies. Researchers focused on mothers living in New Jersey. Although the findings are interesting, experts quoted in a BBC news article on the study say that more research is needed to clearly establish a link. Check out a BBC article here.