RedScrubs
The Resource for Medical Professionals

(Report via Medical News Today) New research being presented at an obesity conference this week found that the cereals that are most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to American children as young as 2 were also the least healthy.

(Report via Med Page Today) Just over half — 54% — of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) cases in southwest England occurred when the baby was co-sleeping in the same bed as a parent, a case-control study showed.

New research from the US adds to mounting evidence that when diagnosing bipolar disorder in children doctors and clinicians should consider irritability as a possible symptom.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States in 2007 around 3 million children under 18 had food allergies - a rise of 18% since 1997. The CDC says in 2006 about 6.8 million children suffered from some sort of allergy and for some reason which remains unclear there are a growing number of children with allergies to foods such as peanuts, eggs and fish and these affected children are two to four times as likely to have related conditions such as asthma or other allergies.

Baby boomers may recall the days of being screened for scoliosis in elementary or middle school. While this practice was common in states across the US for a number of years, it has stopped in many communities. Some may also remember when kids diagnosed with scoliosis wore heavy-looking metal braces. This full-torso brace extended from the pelvis to the base of the skull.
Cindy Marti is a physical therapist and president of Spinal Dynamics of Wisconsin. She has traveled to Europe to study the Schroth method, a non-surgical approach to scoliosis treatment used widely across Europe for decades. She and two of her clinic’s colleagues are among fewer than 20 US-based physical therapists now certified in Schroth.

Individuals who were underweight at birth are at increased risk of developing a condition called secondary focal segmental glomerulosclerosis, according to a study appearing in the January 2009 issue of the Clinical Journal of the American Society Nephrology

According to a recent study, phototherapy did not decrease Neurodevelopmental impairments or deaths in infants weighing less than 1,000g. Although the aggressive treatment using phototherapy was effective in reducing Neurodevelopmental impairments in infants weighing only 501-751 g, death rates tended to be higher. Phototherapy is often used to decrease bilirubin levels. High levels of bilirubin can lead to hearing loss. Other treatment strategies, such as the use of tin mesoporphyrin, might be the safest and most effective strategy to address the postnatal rise in serum bilirubin levels in these tiny infants.