Michael G Burke, MD

Treatment of obstructive sleep apnea/nocturnal hypoxia with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) in children with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) reduces the severity of liver injury and of oxidative stress.

Indeed it does, according to a randomized trial conducted during a 3-year period in England and Wales in more than 1300 exclusively breastfed infants.

Infants born to mothers who receive vitamin D supplementation while pregnant are at reduced risk of being small for gestational age and experience improved growth during infancy, with no increased risk of fetal or neonatal mortality and congenital malformation. These were major findings of a systematic review and meta-analysis of 24 randomized controlled trials involving 5405 participants.

Most parents of young children who are overweight or obese think their child’s weight is “just right,” according to a study conducted in Sweden. However, as their child grows older, more parents recognize when their child is too heavy-especially if he or she has reached the level of obesity.

Compared with their peers who spend no more than 2 hours each weekday exposed to digital media, school-aged children who are in front of screens for longer are less likely to be doing well overall, according to their parents. Furthermore, how much digital media exposure (DME) a child gets is inversely related, in a dose-dependent manner, to markers of childhood “flourishing.”

Researchers at Wisconsin Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, found that 100 children who visited a pediatric emergency department (ED) with a reported history of penicillin allergy based on low-risk symptoms all had negative allergy testing for penicillin and all tolerated a penicillin challenge (500 mg of oral amoxicillin) without developing a severe allergic reaction. Penicillin allergy labels were removed from these children’s hospital medical records.

When you approach a parent who is hesitant about vaccinating her infant at the appropriate well-baby visits, perhaps you say something like this: “Well, we have to do some shots.” Or you might say, “How do you feel about vaccines today?” The former strategy (a “presumptive” approach) is more likely to be effective than the latter (a “participatory” approach), according to a study in parents whom a standardized survey classified as being hesitant about vaccines.

New mothers may develop postpartum depression (PPD) at any time during the first year after giving birth, an analysis of monthly depression screening data showed. Furthermore, the highest rate of positive screens-23%-was at 12 months postpartum.

A retrospective study of data from a regional community pharmacy chain in the Midwest encompassing 98 zip codes found that almost 1 in 8 new prescriptions for individuals aged up to 18 years went unfilled after the pharmacy received the prescription.

Exposure to acid-suppressive medications or antibiotics in the first 6 months of life is associated with development of allergic disease, according to a retrospective study in more than 750,000 children from within 35 days of birth until aged at least 1 year.

Investigators compared the accuracy of an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) practice guideline algorithm for diagnosing of urinary tract infection (UTI) in 2- to 23-month-olds with a new tool (UTICalc; University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) that first estimates UTI probability based on clinical variables and then, if laboratory testing is performed, updates the estimate based on the results.

Among a variety of generic titles, parents prefer being addressed as “Mom” or “Dad” rather than “Mommy/Daddy” or “Ma’am/Sir,” according to a survey of 137 parents of children being seen or admitted to a New York State children’s hospital.

An analysis of about 1590 stock photographs of sleeping babies found that infants often are not portrayed in a way that is consistent with American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines on infant sleep safety.

Youngsters who use social media for an hour a day or longer are likely to sleep for fewer hours than their peers who don’t use social media-and as media use increases, so does this likelihood.

A recent trial showed that a single intravenous infusion of a vector expressing a high specific-activity factor IX gene safely produces a sustained, effective level of factor IX coagulant activity in patients with hemophilia B.

Urinary neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (uNGAL) is highly sensitive and specific for diagnosing urinary tract infections (UTIs), according to a study in febrile children aged up to 24 months.

Compared with adolescents who use e-cigarettes with relatively low or no nicotine concentrations, those who use e-cigarettes with higher nicotine concentrations are more likely to progress to more frequent and intense combustible cigarette smoking and vaping.

A comparison of a combination of oral morphine and oral ibuprofen with each of these drugs alone found that none of these options provided optimal analgesia for the pain of a musculoskeletal injury (MSK-I).

Children who view movies with gun violence are more interested in guns and violence than their peers who do not have this exposure, a recent experiment showed.

Breastfeeding for a minimum of 2 months has a significant protective effect against sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), almost halving the risk of its occurrence.

The risk of coronary artery lesions (CALs) in Kawasaki disease (KD) is related to CYP2E1 gene polymorphisms, a study from Taiwan confirmed.

A novel assay for distinguishing bacterial from viral infections significantly outperformed routine laboratory parameters and biomarkers in a study using serum remnants from children suspected to have acute infection.

Using a cost-utility model of a hypothetical group of symptomatic children aged younger than 2 years who were diagnosed with acute otitis media (AOM), investigators evaluated whether antimicrobial therapy reduces time to symptom resolution, overall symptom burden, and persistence of infection.

Being exposed to recordings of their mothers’ voices limited pain preterm infants experienced while undergoing heel lance procedures, according to a study conducted in an Italian neonatal intensive care unit.

A study of the accuracy of a technology for assessing jaundice in outpatient neonates based on analysis of digital images demonstrated that this smartphone application (app) may be useful for screening newborns for jaundice.

A study of Mycoplasma pneumoniae disease during an epidemic in Norway found that preschool children infected with this bacterium had a significantly higher risk of severe disease, particularly severe pneumonia, than school-aged children.