May 20th, 2022 - More than half of children and youth with autism experienced pandemic-related declines in mental health between May and December 2020, according to a large Canadian cohort study. The study, based on surveys with parents of 230 children and youth with autism, showed that 141 (61%) of these children had mental health deterioration, and 37 (14%) accessed acute mental health services. The researche...

May 20th, 2022 - Every rotation in the third year of medical school provides us with a concrete foundation of clinical knowledge for our medical degree and the opportunity to determine whether or not a particular specialty would be suitable for our future careers. Pediatrics may teach us about developmental milestones; ob/gyn about the stages of labor; surgery about the 5 W's; family medicine about the USPSTF r...

May 20th, 2022 - (Reuters) - A chain of events possibly triggered by unrecognized infection with the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus could be causing the mysterious cases of severe hepatitis reported in hundreds of young children around the world, researchers suggest. Children with COVID-19 are at significantly increased risk for liver dysfunction afterward, according to a report posted on Saturday on medRxiv ahead of p...

May 19th, 2022 - The CDC says 180 children in the United States have been diagnosed with unexplained acute hepatitis, up from 109 cases 2 weeks ago. Most of those newly counted cases were "retrospective" patients, the CDC said in a Wednesday update on the outbreak. "Since CDC's investigation looks at patients reported back to October of 2021, most of these numbers involve patients that are just now being report...

May 19th, 2022 - LONDON, May 18 (Reuters) - Smoking rates have declined globally for the first time on record, according to a new report on tobacco use from a public health campaign group and U.S. academics. However, the figures from the Tobacco Atlas report – described as a potential tipping point by the authors – also mask growing numbers of smokers in parts of the world, as well as increased tobacco use amon...

May 19th, 2022 - CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - Mozambique on Wednesday declared a polio outbreak after the virus was detected in a child living in the northeastern Tete region, the first case of the poliovirus in the country in almost three decades, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said. The case, which marks the second imported case of wild poliovirus in southern Africa this year following an outbreak in Malawi in ...

May 19th, 2022 - President Joe Biden took steps on Wednesday to deal with the nationwide shortage of powdered baby formula.  He used the Defense Production Act to require suppliers to direct resources to baby formula makers before other customers, the White House said in a fact sheet. "Directing firms to prioritize and allocate the production of key infant formula inputs will help increase production and speed ...

May 19th, 2022 - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, signed off today on an advisory panel's recommendation that children ages 5 to 11 years should receive a Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine booster dose at least 5 months after completion of the primary series. The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted 11:1 Thursday afternoon, with one abste...

May 19th, 2022 - Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) caused more than 100,000 deaths in children under age 5 years globally in 2019, according to an analysis published online May 19 in The Lancet. Researchers, led by You Li, PhD, of the School of Public Health, Nanjing Medical University in Nanjing, China, found that nearly half of those (more than 45,000) occurred in children younger than 6 months old. They esti...

May 18th, 2022 - Many of us are reluctant to throw things out. We buy. We accumulate. We collect. Eventually our attics are packed with dusty heirlooms that we rarely, if ever, look at. Eventually we're forced to pare down and head to the Goodwill. But not all of us. Andrew Guzick, PhD Hoarding — or the prolonged difficulty of discarding unneeded possessions — is pervasive in our culture, affecting nearly 3% of...

May 18th, 2022 - Marthe Gautier, a French physician who was involved in the discovery of the extra chromosome that causes Down syndrome, died on Saturday, April 30. She was 96. This is an opportunity for us to look back and reflect on this discovery and the key role Gautier played in it. Like so many other women of her generation, she was a victim of what has come to be known as the Matilda Effect (see box). Tr...

May 18th, 2022 - Mental health hospitalization rates rose for Canadian children and youth between ages 5 and 24 years in 2020, despite a slight decrease in the overall number of hospital visits, according to new data. Hospitalizations for eating disorders increased significantly, rising nearly 60% for girls between ages 10 and 17 years. "One of the key questions throughout the pandemic has focused on the uninte...

May 18th, 2022 - The latest increase in new child COVID-19 cases seems to be picking up steam, rising by 50% in the last week, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. The new-case count was over 93,000 for the week of May 6-12, compared with 62,000 the previous week. That 50% week-to-week change follows increases of 17%, 44%, 12%, and 28% since the nationwide wee...

May 18th, 2022 - Nearly 43,000 people were killed on roads across the U.S. last year, marking the highest number in more than a decade. The death toll jumped 10.5% from 2020 as Americans returned to driving after COVID-19 pandemic quarantine and isolation, according to The Associated Press. The increase represents the largest percentage jump in numbers since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration be...

May 17th, 2022 - NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Among patients with uncontrolled moderate to severe asthma, a fixed-dose combination of albuterol and budesonide gives better as-needed relief than albuterol alone, a large international study shows. Over 24 weeks, the combination lowered the risk of severe exacerbation by 26% (P=0.001) when the doses were 180 ug of albuterol and 160 ug of budesonide. A 180 ug dose o...

May 17th, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Transgender minors in Alabama for now can use medicine to transition, a federal judge said late on Friday in an order that blocked part of a state ban on gender-affirming treatments. The ruling, a preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Liles Burke, was issued less than a week after the law went into effect on May 8. Burke, who was appointed by former Preside...

May 17th, 2022 - WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators will announce action on baby formula imports as soon as Monday to address a nationwide shortage that has left parents scrambling to feed their babies, the Food and Drug Administration's chief said. FDA Commissioner Robert Califf provided no details, but President Joe Biden said last week he was working to allow more formula to come in from other cou...

May 17th, 2022 - SAN FRANCISCO — Children who live in neighborhoods that are at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are at significantly greater risk for being admitted to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and of dying there, a study of Medicaid data showed. Among more than 4 million children and adolescents in 12 US states, those in the most socioeconomically deprived quartile had a significantly highe...

May 17th, 2022 - WASHINGTON (AP) — Under fire from parents and politicians, President Joe Biden's administration announced steps Monday to ease a nationwide shortage of baby formula, including reopening the largest domestic manufacturing plant and increasing imports from overseas. The Food and Drug Administration said it was streamlining its review process to make it easier for foreign manufacturers to begin sh...

May 17th, 2022 - May 17, 2022 – The FDA expanded an emergency use authorization (EUA) today allowing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 booster shot for children between the ages of 5 to 11 who are at least 5 months out from their first vaccine series. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 28.6% of children in this age group have received both COVID-19 vaccines in the ...