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Scots get serious about underage smoking

In the next round in the fight against smoking the sale of cigarettes to people aged under 18 is expected to be banned in Scotland.

3 May 2006

Many children still exposed at home to tobacco smoke - exposure linked to behavioral problems

According to research in the U.S. even though most Americans are in agreement with smoking restrictions in public places, many adults still expose their children to significant health risks by smoking cigarettes at home.

3 May 2006

Antidepressant suicide risk up five times for seniors

According to Canadian researchers seniors who are prescribed antidepressants such as Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft are almost five times more likely to commit suicide during the first month on the drugs than those given other medication to treat depression.

3 May 2006

Verbal medical order errors reduced to zero

Hospitals have spent millions of dollars on computerized physician order entry systems to reduce medical errors, but a simple change in the way verbal orders are entered in the system -- so simple that it cost nothing to implement -- has reduced errors to zero, according to a new Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study.

3 May 2006

Exposure to cocaine before birth not linked to bad behavior in kids

Toddlers exposed to cocaine before birth exhibit no more behavioral problems than other children their age, despite early predictions that "crack babies" would grow up to be delinquents, University of Florida researchers say.

3 May 2006

Therapeutic gene suspected to cause cancer

One of the few gene therapy studies that had ever been successful was terminated in 2003, because several of the treated children had developed leukemia.

3 May 2006

MR cystography accurate and safe for vesicoureteral reflux screening

MR cystography provides excellent anatomic detail of the urinary system and is a potential screening examination for vesicoureteral reflux (VUR), according to a new study by researchers from Changi General Hospital in Singapore and the University of California, San Francisco.

3 May 2006

DARPA grant supports research toward realizing tissue regeneration

While U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan are surviving injuries that in previous conflicts likely would have been fatal, the number of wounded with major tissue loss has never before been so high.

3 May 2006

Passive smoking associated with behavior problems in children and pre-teens

A new Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center study shows that exposure to environmental tobacco smoke, even at extremely low levels, is associated with behavior problems in children and pre-teens.

3 May 2006

More effective influenza vaccine

An intranasal influenza vaccine proved to be more effective than the injectable influenza vaccine in children older than 6 months and younger than 5 years of age, according to study data presented at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in San Francisco.

3 May 2006

Ozzies skip lunch!

While most Australians think that eating a substantial, healthy lunch is important, one in three skip this vital meal at least once a week, and one in 10 rarely or never have it.

3 May 2006

Very young infants are much more capable of organising their visual world than previously thought

Research investigating attention in infancy has revealed that, at just four months old, babies are able to organise visual information in at least three different ways, according to brightness, shape, and how close the visual elements are together (proximity).

3 May 2006

Minority and multiracial children experience many disparities in medical and oral health status

Minority and multiracial children experience many disparities in medical and oral health status, access to care, and use of services, according to a new national study by researchers at the Center for Advancement of Underserved Children at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

3 May 2006

New technique reduces radiation exposure by 60 percent in abdominal CT of children

By lowering the tube current to account for both the weight and body symmetry of a child, an abdominal CT radiation dose can be reduced by 60% without compromising the image quality, says a new study by researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania.

3 May 2006

Compensation by tumor suppressor genes during retinal development in mice and humans

Humans are more susceptible to developing the eye cancer retinoblastoma than mice because, unlike humans, mice can compensate for the loss of activity of a gene critical to normal retinal development, according to results of a study by investigators at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

3 May 2006

Link between perceived neighborhood safety and BMI

Mothers of young children are more likely to be obese when they perceive their neighborhoods as unsafe, according to a new study in the journal Obesity.

3 May 2006

Parents rarely use baby gates

A recent study by researchers in emergency medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found parents use baby gates and bath thermometers less than 25 percent of the time and pediatricians are partially to blame.

3 May 2006

Progressive histological damage in liver allografts following pediatric liver transplantation

A new study on the long-term outcome of children undergoing liver transplants found that chronic hepatitis (CH) was common and that it was not detectible using standard blood tests.

3 May 2006

Traffic, susceptibility and childhood asthma

Young children who live near a major road are significantly more likely to have asthma than children who live only blocks away, according to a study that appears in Environmental Health Perspectives.

3 May 2006

Researchers recommend national uniform newborn screening tests

In a new study, conducted for the federal government and published in a supplement to the May issue of the journal Pediatrics, Stephen M. Downs, M.D. and Aaron E. Carroll, M.D., of the Indiana University School of Medicine, recommend a national uniform panel of newborn screening tests which they found to be cost saving as well as life saving.

3 May 2006