News

The creation of a country-wide injury surveillance system for unintentional child and adolescent injuries could help monitor risk and identify ways to reduce injuries in the United Kingdom, according to an editorial published in the June 21 issue of BMJ.

Influential doctors known as "key opinion leaders" are paid generous fees to influence their peers to prescribe a company's drugs and may in fact be considered salespeople by the industry, according to an article in the June 21 issue of BMJ.

Among asthmatics, influenza vaccination coverage is increasing but remains far below the Healthy People 2010 targets of 60 percent for persons aged 18 to 64 with high-risk conditions and 90 percent for all persons aged 65 and older, according to a report published in the June 20 issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel has come out in favor of a request by Amgen Inc. to broaden the use of Enbrel to include moderate to severe child psoriasis.

Acting Surgeon General Steven Galson opened a two-day conference this week to form an action plan to prevent the national rise of premature infant births.

Only a small minority of U.S. physicians have electronic health record systems in their offices, with cost the most commonly cited barrier to adoption among those without access to a system, according to an article released online June 18 in advance of publication in the July 3 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

At the Endocrine Society's 90th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, researchers found positive results for an off-label treatment in a small study of early puberty in girls.

Maternity practices that could potentially interfere with breast-feeding are common in U.S. hospitals and birth centers, according to survey results published June 13 in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Blood pressure tracking from childhood to adulthood is useful because childhood blood pressure is correlated with blood pressure in adulthood, according to a report published online June 16 in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.

Infections during the first year of life may increase the risk of rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile idiopathic arthritis later in life, according to new findings.

In high-risk women, a transtheoretical model-tailored intervention significantly increases dual contraceptive use but does not affect the incidence of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, according to study findings published in the June issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Lower exposure to ultraviolet B radiation in regions that are more distant from the equator is associated with a higher incidence of childhood type 1 diabetes, supporting the concept that vitamin D may play a role in reducing risk of the disease, according to research published online June 12 in Diabetologia.

The low birthweight rate in 2005 was 8.2%, the highest percentage since 1968, according to the 2008 Kids Count report, released by the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

The United Health Foundation has announced a $50,000 grant to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) to help pediatricians improve care delivery.

Hereditary rickets due to altered vitamin D metabolism is associated with multiple sclerosis, according to study findings published in the June issue of the Archives of Neurology.

Since 1990, the number of golf cart-related injuries has steadily increased, and the high rate of injuries among children suggests that new guidelines are needed, according to a report published in the July issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Dasatinib, a BCR-ABL inhibitor considerably more potent than imatinib, has similar efficacy but less toxicity at a dose of 100 mg once a day compared with the approved 70 mg twice a day in patients with chronic-phase chronic myelogenous leukemia who have failed imatinib treatment, according to study findings published online June 9 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Among teenagers, excessive cell phone use is associated with disrupted sleep, restlessness, stress and fatigue, according to research presented this week at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, held in Baltimore.

While maternal obesity does not appear to impact infant mortality among whites, the opposite may be true among blacks, according to the June Obstretics & Gynecology.

Propranolol is effective in treating severe capillary hemangiomas in children, relieving redness, and softening and flattening the lesions, according to an article in the June 12 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

Survey results show that a North Carolina cell phone ban for young drivers did not lower their cell phone use, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

The herb Hypericum perforatum, more commonly known as St. John's wort, has no effect on the symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the results of a study published in the June 11 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

An outbreak of pertussis in the summer of 2004 in 11 infants born in a Texas hospital was linked to a health care worker at the hospital's newborn nursery with the illness, according to a report in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's June 6 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Factors linked to sleep loss among six-month-old infants include maternal depression, breastfeeding, and a lower socioeconomic status, according to recent findings.

Being overweight or obese increases the risk of having a pregnancy affected by neural tube defects, with the risk for severely obese women triple that of normal weight women, according to a review published in the June issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has updated its position on dental amalgam by stating that the mercury within the substance may pose risks to pregnant women, fetuses, and children.

A report by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA) of 150 top US medical schools found many have insufficiently strict conflict of interest policies, or do not have them at all.

Transplanting human fetal cells into the brains of newborn mice lacking myelin leads to widespread myelination, restoration of normal neural function and increased survival, according to research published in the June issue of Cell Stem Cell.

News reports of the death of a South Carolina boy attributed the accident to "dry drowning," a paradoxically scary term.

Despite the fact that meningitis C vaccination is part of the United Kingdom's routine infant vaccination program, one in five adolescents has insufficient protection from the disease and may need a booster shot to maintain immunity, according to a report published June 5 in BMJ Online First.