Health

It seems like every day we keep hearing about a new place scientists can grab stem cells that may lead to “miracle cures”. Experts are skeptical baby teeth stem cells are the answer, but hey, can’t hurt to look into it further.

To parents, it might sound like the best kind of health insurance — a personal bank of stem cells, obtained from a baby tooth, that would be available for the taking should their child develop a life-threatening illness years down the road.

The catch: The therapies that would use these stem cells have not yet been developed. Stem cell experts say such advances are years or decades away — if they ever come to pass.

And considering the cost of extracting and storing these stem cells — an initial price tag of $590, plus an annual fee of $100 — some experts say the slim chance that such stem cells would ever come in handy is not worth the expense.

Let’s hope this report is accurate, as it’s very good news. Hopefully next we will see a downward trend.

There was no significant increase in the prevalence of obese children and teens in the U.S. between 1999 and 2006, in contrast to the increase that had been reported in prior years, according to a new study.

“In the United States, the prevalence of overweight among children increased between 1980 and 2004, and the heaviest children have been getting heavier,” the authors write.

Cynthia L. Ogden, Ph.D., of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Hyattsville, Md., and colleagues updated the most recent national estimates of the prevalence of pediatric high body mass index (BMI). Height and weight measurements were obtained from 8,165 children and adolescents as part of the 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which are nationally representative surveys of the U.S. population.

No statistically significant change in high BMI for age was found between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006. No statistically significant trend in high BMI was found over the time periods 1999-2000, 2001-2002, 2003-2004, and 2005-2006.

The Center for Disease Control is reporting that a common virus that’s generally considered to be mild is to blame for the deaths of 5 children.

The five deaths mark the first time an infection was found to be fatal, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tens of thousands of children get the virus each year, but it seldom causes illness, and then usually mild cases. Young children, with immature immune systems, are at the greatest danger from the virus, called Coxsackievirus B1.

It’s not clear that the virus has mutated to become more dangerous, said Steve Oberste, chief of a CDC laboratory that investigated the deaths. Perhaps the virus’s deadliness was revealed simply through better laboratory tests, he said.

“It’s probably not something that should panic people,” he said.

While it’s still not exactly health food, a new switch at McDonald’s might make parents feel slightly less guilty for that occasional Happy Meal purchase. That’s if they ever felt any guilt in the first place.

McDonald’s french fries are now trans-fat-free in all its restaurants in the United States and Canada, the fast-food restaurant chain said Thursday.

McDonald’s has lagged other restaurant operators in switching over to a zero-trans-fat cooking oil out of worries it would compromise the taste of its trademark fries. It has been under increasing pressure from consumer advocates and some public officials to make the change.

The new oil is canola-based and includes corn and soy oils.

Wow, it’s big awards day for medical malpractice lawsuits. A woman in Aurora, Illinois has reached a $15.35 million settlement with a hospital and doctor. She had sued because six years ago, her son suffered brain damage during delivery.

Vanessa Jenkins gave birth to her son, Cody Smithey, at Valley West Community Hospital in Sandwich in October 2001.

Attorneys for Jenkins in Tuesday’s settlement say the boy suffered cerebral palsy and mental retardation after the doctor unsuccessfully used a vacuum extractor device during his birth.

A jury has awarded a woman in Ohio $20 million after they found doctors negligent in leaving her baby stuck in her birth canal for over 13 hours.

[Heather] Grow’s attorneys argued during a medical malpractice trial that the baby suffered brain injuries. Doctors had told Grow months earlier that she had a narrow pelvic arch.

The lawyers say the now 10-year-old girl has limited use of her limbs, has vision problems and is mildly retarded.

The doctors organization Group Health Associates says Dr. Lisa Yang “did everything medically possible to facilitate a healthy delivery.”

On a side note, this incident to place in 1997. Isn’t there something wrong with the system when it takes over 10 years to resolve such things?!

A new study reports that women who use cell phones while pregnant have an increased risk of children with behavioral problems. Didn’t previous reports say that the phones would melt our brains? We’re strictly using the speakerphone feature from now on…

Mothers who used their mobile phone while pregnant were 54 percent more likely to report issues such as hyperactivity and emotional problems in their children, Britain’s Daily Mail and The Independent reported Monday.

The study was conducted by researchers at UCLA and a university in Aarhus, Denmark. The findings will be published in the July issue of the journal Epidemiology.

UCLA Professor Leeka Kheifets, who had previously been skeptical of reports linking mobile phone use to behavior disorders in children, concluded with her three co-authors that there did appear to be an association between mobile phone exposure and behavioral problems. However, they said, radiation may not be the cause.

Despite growing concerns about the safety of BPA — bisphenol-a — in plastic products like baby bottles, the FDA is refusing to speak out negatively against the chemical, saying it sees no reason to believe its current use is unsafe.

The FDA’s statement, released in a climate of heavy pressure from the chemical industry, is in contrast to developments in Canada. On April 19 the Canadian government began a 60-day public comment period on whether polycarbonate baby bottles should be banned in the country. Observers have said a comprehensive ban on polycarbonate is even possible up north in the near future.

For its part, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., makers of Nalgene bottles, have announced that they will stop using polycarbonate. Wal-Mart says it expects all baby bottles it carries to be free of the material by early next year, and Toys R Us has discussed a similar plan.

A new study purports that the parents of children with autism are twice as likely to have been hospitalized for a mental disorder. Is this getting scientists closer to proving some sort of genetic link?

The study looked at 1,237 children born between 1977 and 2003 who were diagnosed with autism before age 10. To be deemed autistic, the children all had to have received a diagnosis of autism disorder, Asperger Syndrome or pervasive developmental disorder.

Seventy-seven per cent of the children involved in the study were boys.

“These results support those of smaller studies that indicated an increase in psychiatric conditions among parents of children with autism, specifically schizophrenia, neurotic disorders and depression,” write the authors. “Identifying families with a propensity for rare psychiatric conditions may help uncover rare genes that contribute to the susceptibility of both disorders.”

Alice Tyson, a 3-year-old in the U.K., has a rare condition that only affects one in a million people. It’s called Xeroderma Pigmentosum, which causes her skin to be permanently damaged and increases her risk of skin cancer if she is exposed to sunlight.

The little girl spends much of her time confined to the darkness of the family sitting room.

So dermatology nurse at the Cumberland Infirmary, Julie Bowman, decided the youngster more than deserved a grand day out.

She hit the phonebook and got in touch with businesses all over the city calling on them to pledge a treat for Alice.

She said: “A lot of local people have been so interested in Alice and I thought the family deserved something nice.

So the question, as the article states, is “does it mean U.S. kids are being over-treated? Or that U.K. children are being under-treated”?

Experts say that’s almost beside the point, because use is rising on both sides of the Atlantic. And with scant long-term safety data, it’s likely the drugs are being over-prescribed for both U.S. and U.K. children, research suggests.

Among the most commonly used drugs were those to treat autism and hyperactivity.

In the U.K. study, anti-psychotics were prescribed for 595 children at a rate of less than four per 10,000 children in 1992. By 2005, 2,917 children were prescribed the drugs at a rate of seven per 10,000 — a near-doubling, said lead author Fariz Rani, a researcher at the University of London’s pharmacy school.

A 15-year-old girl from the Philippines is undergoing surgery to fix her feet that are so clubbed they twist upside down and backwards. Doctors at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York are performing the surgery free of charge. How cool is that? And hot on the heels of the story we highlighted last week about a pro bono surgery to remove a large tumor from a Vietnamese girl’s face. Rock on, medical community!

[Jingle Luis] and her mother have journeyed from the Philippines to Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx for surgery Thursday and follow-up treatment that will consist of slowly rotating her feet until she can walk normally.

Her case is more severe than those usually seen by doctors in industrialized countries.

“Generally speaking, with modern technology, it doesn’t get to this point,” said Dr. Terry Amaral, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who will perform the surgery at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.

What an incredibly odd correlation. Apparently if your child attends daycare when they are very young, it can reduce their risk of developing leukemia by 30%. Make sure to whip out that statistic next time someone looks down at you for being a working mom.

The new research, to be presented April 29 at the 2nd Children with Leukaemia Causes and Prevention of Childhood Leukaemia Conference in London, is the first comprehensive analysis of studies investigating the association between social contact and childhood leukaemia.

“Combining the results from these studies together provided us with more confidence that the protective effect is real. Analysing the evidence in this way gives a more reliable answer to the question and a more precise estimate of the magnitude of the effect,” said the study’s leader, Dr. Patricia Buffler, professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health of the University of California, Berkeley.

A 7-year-old Saudi Arabian boy had his arms severed in a farming accident, and unfortunately they could not be saved. The reason is that medical care where he lives is woefully inadequate.

Al-Ashdaf Muhammad Al-Sharari’s arms were severed by the irrigation machine at a farm in Al-Jouf three weeks ago. The two hospitals he stayed at near his home lacked proper facilities and specialists to treat Al-Ashdaf’s condition.

He was recently transferred to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh where he is in stable condition.

However, surgeons at King Faisal said the inadequate medical treatment that Al-Ashdaf received right after the hospital has made it impossible for the boy to have his arms reattached because another infection would likely develop.

A 5-year-old girl has a disease that is so rare, only 200 people in the world have been diagnosed with it. It’s called Leukodystrophy, a “congenital hypomyelination”, and it’s a neurological disease that actually attacks the white matter in the brain.

This makes it difficult for Lexi [Drumm]’s brain to communicate with other parts of her body, Drumm told the newspaper.

Lexi was born healthy and could even walk and talk up until she was 14-months-old. That’s when she had a seizure and “everything deteriorated from then on,” Drumm said.

Now the disease has started attacking white matter on Lexi’s brain stem and she is unable to move her head and eyes. She can still control her smile.

“I could be in the worst mood possible, and that little smile can still perk me up,” Drumm said.