News

Ralph D. Feigin, MD, Physician-in-Chief at Texas Children's Hospital for more than three decades and an internationally renowned expert in pediatric infectious diseases, died on August 14 of lung cancer. He was 70.

Even older adults with computer skills may have difficulty using the Medicare.gov Web site to determine eligibility for services and enroll in a drug plan, according to a research letter published in the Aug. 20 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Adolescent acne patients prefer a treatment strategy that would offer 100 percent acne clearance without scarring, and would be willing to pay more money to achieve this outcome, according to a study published in the August issue of the Archives of Dermatology.

Allowing local health facilities in developing countries to treat children with severe pneumonia rather than referring them to hospitals results in better disease management and fewer deaths, according to a report published online Aug. 19 in The Lancet.

Healthy adolescents with poor quality of sleep are more likely to have prehypertension, according to research published online Aug. 18 in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Postpubertal females with asthma have more severe airway responsiveness compared with males and the responsiveness is associated with gender-specific factors, researchers report in the Aug. 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

Refugees recently arrived from sub-Saharan Africa may be infected with malaria, even if they received treatment before arriving in the United States, officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report in the Aug. 15 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

In developing countries, improved oxygen systems with pulse oximetry and oxygen concentrators can significantly reduce the death rate for children with pneumonia and are cost-effective compared to other public health interventions, according to a report published online Aug. 18 in The Lancet.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the inclusion of efficacy, safety, and dosing data for patients ages 3 months to 17 years in the label for Merck's Cancidas (caspofungin acetate).

Children with greater intakes of dairy products are likely to enjoy superior bone health in adolescence, according to a report published online Aug. 14 in the Journal of Pediatrics.

Low birth weight children and those born small for their gestational age are likely to be salt sensitive, according to study findings published online Aug. 11 in Hypertension.

The number of children admitted to hospitals for asthma has dropped, but the number of children admitted for other conditions who also had asthma increased, reports the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

As schools begin to prepare their teams for the upcoming season, they need to be aware of the dangers of heat and heat illness. While not as prevalent as it has been in past years, cases of heat stroke are still among the most dangerous things that can happen to an athlete during summer practices, according to the Annual Survey of Football Injury Research.

A history of ear infections in childhood may damage the sense of taste, which causes changes in the sensory properties of foods, increases liking for energy-dense foods and caloric intake, and ultimately produces weight gain, according to research presented at the American Psychological Association annual convention held Aug. 14 to 17 in Boston.

Pediatric chronic cough was associated with repeated doctor visits and parental stress, though parental worries decreased when children ceased coughing, researchers report in the August issue of Chest.

About 80 percent of human cases of highly pathogenic avian influenza A (H5N1) confirmed in Indonesia between June 2005 and February 2008 were fatal, with early antiviral treatment improving the likelihood of survival, according to a report published online Aug. 14 in The Lancet.

As reported by a study in the Journal of Pediatrics, dairy intake during childhood may have beneficial effects for bone health into adolescence.

A Brief Report by Mark M. Boucek, M.D., and colleagues from the Denver Children's Hospital Pediatric Heart Transplant Team published in the Aug. 14 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine is the basis for an extended discussion of the ethics of organ procurement in three accompanying Perspective articles, an editorial, and an online roundtable discussion.

Adults who become obese in their 30s are more likely to have been clumsy and have poor physical coordination as children, according to research published Aug. 12 in BMJ Online First.

The recent violence and human rights abuses in Zimbabwe have resulted in the breakdown of the country's health system, according to an editorial published online Aug. 12 in BMJ, which says the international medical community should condemn the atrocities, support human rights and help rebuild the country's health infrastructure.

The majority of mothers who breastfeed discontinue the practice before the baby is 6 months old, according to a national survey by Brigham Young University.

After a school-based psychosocial intervention, children exposed to armed conflict had improvements in post-traumatic stress symptoms, but showed no significant changes in several other outcomes, according to research published Aug. 13 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Rates of post-traumatic stress disorder are high among two previously under-recognized groups -- former combatants who experienced sexual violence and former child soldiers, according to two studies published in the Aug. 13 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Financial incentive schemes that pay general practices for their performance can help reduce inequalities in the delivery of health care between affluent and poor areas, according to a report published online Aug. 12 in The Lancet.

Teenagers may feel that abstinence does not exclude sexual activity, but simply a natural step that precedes it, according to the June Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

The homeoprotein Otx2 plays a role in postnatal maturation of parvalbumin cells and activates visual cortical plasticity in mice, according to research published in the Aug. 8 issue of Cell.

Stem cells can be produced from cells from patients with a variety of genetic disorders, allowing investigation into disease pathogenesis and drug development, according to research published online Aug. 7 in Cell.

Infants who are given antibiotics in the first three months of life may wheeze at 15 months, likely due to the presence of chest infections, as reported in the Clinical and Experimental Allergy.

Although newborns deserve medical treatments based on clinical research, recruiting infants to more than one study carries important scientific and ethical implications, according to a commentary in the Aug. 9 issue of The Lancet.

Children may face an increased risk of death in the two years following some febrile seizures, researchers report in the Aug. 9 issue of The Lancet.