Largest study of US children to begin in January

The largest study of U.S. children ever performed — aiming to track 100,000 from conception to age 21 — will start recruiting mothers-to-be in North Carolina and New York in January.

The ambitious National Children's Study aims to learn how the environment and other factors affect youngsters' health, especially development of such conditions as autism, asthma, learning disabilities, diabetes and obesity. Scientists will examine a range of factors, from the diets of pregnant women and young children to the effects of chemicals used in plastics.

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Risk Of SIDS Is Twice-Linked To Smoking During Pregnancy

In a first ever experimental study to compare breathing reflexes of preemies born to smokers with those born to non-smokers, researchers in Canada found that premature babies whose mothers smoked during pregnancy are likely to be at a higher risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) than premature infants whose mothers did not.

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Kids follow parents' lead on fruits and vegetables

Parents who want their preschoolers to eat their fruits and vegetables should probably practice what they preach, a new study suggests.

In a study of more than 1,300 families, researchers found that when parents boosted their own consumption of fruits and vegetables, so did their young children.

The findings, reported in the journal Preventive Medicine, point to the importance of parents "modeling" a healthy diet for their preschoolers. They also suggest that educating parents on nutrition early on could help address the problem of childhood obesity, the researchers say.

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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.

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Delaying motherhood linked with more c-sections

The increase in the rates of cesarean sections reported by many countries appears to be associated, in part, to more and more women deciding to have children later in life, according to a report in the current issue of PLoS Medicine.

In the study, laboratory testing showed that as maternal age increases, the ability of the smooth muscle of the uterus to contract slows down, which is thought to slow the progression of labor, thereby increasing the likelihood of c-section.

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Most children with milk allergy tolerate warm milk

Seventy-five percent of children with cow's milk allergy will be able to tolerate it if it is heated extensively, according to a report in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

Children who have outgrown their milk allergies still have milk-specific antibodies, but the specific milk proteins that trigger this reaction can almost entirely be destroyed through exposure to high temperatures. The researchers therefore reasoned that children with milk allergy might tolerate milk if it were extensively heated.

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Dietary fiber cuts risk of pregnancy complication

Eating more fiber during the first trimester of pregnancy seems to reduce the risk of developing preeclampsia, a potentially fatal condition characterized by elevated blood pressure.

The finding appears to be another good reason for pregnant women to maintain good fiber intake, one expert said.

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Parents of autistic children are often aloof themselves

New research shows that some parents of autistic children appear to be "socially aloof," providing more evidence that some aspects of autism are hereditary.

"This manifests as a tendency not to prefer interactions with others, not to enjoy 'small talk' for the sake of the social experience, and to have few close friendships involving sharing and mutual support. This characteristic is really a variation of the normal range of social behavior and not associated with any functional impairment," Dr. Joe Piven, director of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities and co-author of a paper published in the July 17 issue of Current Biology, said in a university news release.

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Expectant moms who eat nuts boost child asthma risk

Pregnant women who eat nuts or nut products like peanut butter daily raise the risk their children will develop asthma by 50 percent, Dutch researchers said on Tuesday.

The study also showed that moderate amounts did not seem to have an effect, meaning it is too soon to say whether pregnant women should give up nuts because they contain many important nutrients and healthy fats a developing fetus needs, they said.

"We were the first to find these strong effects on asthma symptoms," said Saskia Willers, an epidemiologist at Utrecht University, who led the study linking nuts with asthma.

"But until we are certain we don't want to restrict them from the diet. So it is important that other studies replicate the findings," she said.

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Empathy comes naturally to children: study

When children see others in pain, their brains respond as if it were happening to them, U.S. researchers said on Friday.

This response, which also has been shown in adults, suggests that normal school-age children may be naturally prone to empathy, they said.

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Pregnancy boosts heart attack risk

Although heart attacks are rare among young women, becoming pregnant does double or triple a woman's risk, a new study finds.

"This is a unique phenomenon in the sense that these are young women who are not supposed to have [heart attacks]," said lead researcher Dr. Uri Elkayam, a professor of medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

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Substance abuse care in pregnancy helps mom, baby

Infants born to women with substance abuse problems will fare better if their mothers undergo treatment for these problems early in pregnancy, according to the largest study to date to investigate this issue.

In fact, they did just as well as babies born to mothers who didn't have issues with drug or alcohol use on nearly all of the measures the researchers looked at, Dr. Nancy C. Goler of The Permanente Medical Group in Vallejo, California, and her colleagues found.

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Cesarean delivery may increase kids' asthma risk

Babies born by Cesarean section may have a moderately increased risk of developing asthma compared with those born naturally, Norwegian researchers report after investigating this link in a population-wide study.

Dr. Mette C. Tollanes, of the University of Bergen, in Norway, and colleagues looked at the modes of delivery among more than 1.7 million single births reported to the Medical Birth Registry of Norway between 1967 and 1998. They used registry data from Norway's National Insurance Scheme to determine the number of children who, through the age of 18 or the year 2002, developed severe asthma.

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New method may help predict IVF success

Just four factors can predict with 70 percent accuracy whether a woman will become pregnant through "test-tube" baby technology known as in vitro fertilization, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is a costly treatment that aims to increase a woman's chances of becoming pregnant but in the United States it is successful only 18 to 45 percent of the time, according to the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology.

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Mediterranean diet in pregnancy may curb allergies

Women who eat a Mediterranean diet while pregnant could help stave off asthma and allergies in their children, a new study suggests.

The traditional Mediterranean diet is rich in plant-based foods -- vegetables, fruits, whole grain breads and cereals, legumes, and nuts -- as well as olive oil and fish. Adherents consume low to moderate amounts of dairy products and eggs, lesser amounts of white meat, and infrequently eat red meat.

Some studies have suggested that such eating patterns can lower children's odds of asthma symptoms and skin and nasal allergies. But it's unclear whether women can affect their children's future allergy risks by following a Mediterranean diet during pregnancy.

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C-section may complicate next pregnancies

Cesarean delivery performed in a first pregnancy appears to increase the risk of complications in later pregnancies, researchers have shown.

The findings stem from an analysis of Norway registry data for 637,497 first and second births in women with at least two single births and 242,812 first, second, and third births in women with at least three single births.

Compared to a vaginal first birth, a cesarean delivery at first birth approximately doubled the risk in a second pregnancy of a woman developing pre-eclampsia, placenta abnormalities, and having a small baby, according to a report in the June issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

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Episiotomy raises tear risk in next delivery

Episiotomy, an incision of the perineum intended to prevent tearing during the delivery of baby, may cause problems when a woman has another baby, a new study shows.

Researchers found that women who undergo episiotomy during their first vaginal delivery have an increased likelihood of suffering a tear, or laceration, in subsequent deliveries.

"In the past, episiotomy was thought to be an innocuous procedure and possibly even protective against severe perineal lacerations," Dr. Marianna Alperin told Reuters Health. "It has since been clearly shown that episiotomy increases the risk of severe obstetrical lacerations in that delivery."

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Self-help may ease back pain from pregnancy

Lower back pain is common during and after pregnancy, but learning a few self-management techniques may ease the pain for many women, a study suggests.

In a clinical trial involving 126 women with lingering back pain after childbirth, Dutch researchers found that those who learned self-management measures from a physical therapist fared better than those given standard care.

Three months after delivery, they had less pain and fewer physical limitations, and had generally returned to work sooner than women in the standard-care group.

The findings, published in the online journal BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, suggest that learning how to deal with back pain in day-to-day life can be more useful to women than typical medical care.

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Stufy: Essential dental treatment safe for pregnant women

Pregnant women can safely undergo essential dental treatment and receive topical and local anesthetics at 13 to 21 weeks gestation, says a study published in the June issue of The Journal of the American Dental Association.

Although obstetricians generally consider dental care safe for pregnant women, supporting clinical trial evidence has been lacking. To address this issue, researchers compared safety outcomes from the Obstetrics and Periodontal Therapy Trial in which pregnant women received scaling and root planing (deep cleaning) and essential dental treatment (defined as treatment of moderate-to-severe cavities or fractured or abscessed teeth).

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US life expectancy tops 78 as top diseases decline

For the first time, U.S. life expectancy has surpassed 78 years, the government reported Wednesday. The increase is due mainly to falling mortality rates in almost all the leading causes of death, federal health officials said. The average life expectancy for babies born in 2006 was about four months greater than for children born in 2005.

However, the United States continues to lag behind about 30 other countries in estimated life span, according to World Health Organization data.

Japan is No. 1 on the list, with a life expectancy of 83 for children born in 2006. Switzerland and Australia were also near the top of the list.

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