News

A roundup of letters about chronically ill teenagers and sexual self-management, voice recognition software, and treatment for acute appendicitis.

Do we all need to wake up to the relationship between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and sleep deficits in our patients?

In a new position statement, the American Diabetes Association has recommended a lower hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) target for children with type 1 diabetes and made the target uniform across all pediatric age groups.

Suicide attempts among teenagers rose almost 22% after US Food and Drug Administration warnings about antidepressants led to a drop in prescribing the drugs, new data reveal.

Children who spend less time in structured activities show improved self-directed executive function, enabling them to better set and pursue their own goals without parental intervention, a new study suggests.

Babies exposed to pet and rodent dander, cockroach allergens, and household bacteria are less likely to develop allergies, wheezing, and asthma, but only if the exposure occurs before 1 year of age, a new study reports.

Teenagers’ rapidly developing brains put them at high risk of harm from marijuana use, a review of the drug’s adverse effects emphasizes.

Teenagers with a mental disorder who see a school psychologist first are more likely to go to their pediatrician or family doctor for subsequent care, but few seek out a mental health specialist, a recent analysis finds.

Pediatric practices could suffer significant financial disruption and administrative errors during the transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10 procedural and diagnostic codes, a study reports.

Physical activity in youth leads to stronger bones later on, but inactive teenagers, including most girls, may lose out on the gains, a study shows.

One in 8 children in the United States will suffer maltreatment-neglect or abuse-before they turn 18 years old, a recent study estimates.

The number of adolescents aged from 12 to 15 years with adequate cardiorespiratory fitness continues to decline, according to the latest research from National Center for Health Statistics.

Teenagers who experience 5 or more serious sunburns before their 20th birthday could be increasing their lifetime risk of skin cancers by as much as 80%, according to new data from a 20-year study.

Pediatric practices that have a practice facilitator with public health, primary care, and coaching experience can improve quality of care, particularly with preventive care services, according to a recent study.

Used as a prophylactic, Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938 significantly reduced the risk of developing diarrhea or a respiratory tract infection (RTI) in healthy, 6-month-old to 36-month-old children who attended daycare, a study conducted in Mexico showed.

Eating disorders are severe conditions that affect children, adolescents, and young adults with increasing frequency. These disorders carry a high medical and psychiatric morbidity, with a standardized mortality ratio for anorexia nervosa (AN) of 6 and for bulimia nervosa (BN) of 2.

Investigators examined the neocortical architecture of the cortex of children with autism using postmortem analysis of the expression patterns of 25 cortical genes in 11 children aged from 2 to 15 years with autism and comparing them with the patterns of 11 children without autism.

A new study supports the hypothesis that a genetic disposition to being overweight rests in part on an association with a low level of responsiveness to internal satiety cues, which can lead to overeating and weight gain.

Acetaminophen use during pregnancy may be linked to attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in offspring.

As revealed in Contemporary Pediatrics’ “First Issues and Attitudes Survey” published in December 2013, 43% of pediatricians using electronic health records (EHRs) consider them an “ineffective and burdensome technology.”

With the incidence of 9 major foodborne diseases not changing significantly since 2006-2008, according to a new preliminary report for 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says more needs to be done for prevention.

A worried mother brings her 2-year-old boy to your office for evaluation of an asymptomatic skin eruption that has been present for 2 months. The lesion developed 6 months after he sustained an abrasion to the same site when he fell on concrete steps.

With a little creativity, doctors and hospital staff can alleviate the anxieties of their young patients.

With summer’s arrival, the accidental death rate of children spikes. More than 2000 children die each summer from preventable injuries.

Think all your good counsel to parents on the criticality of immunizations can win over caregivers vacillating on vaccinations?

David Diamond, PhD discusses Forgotten Baby Syndrome and its impact on vehicular heat stroke fatalities.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has updated its recommendations for drug testing of children and adolescents.

Babies born via cesarean delivery and those treated with antibiotics during the first year of life are at least 3 times more likely to develop eosinophilic esophagitis, according to a new study.

The longer parents smoke around their children, the more likely the children are to become heavy smokers, according to the findings of a multigenerational study of smoking risk.

Compared with children without autism spectrum disorder (ASD), children with ASD have significantly altered levels of certain bacteria-produced gut metabolites that affect brain function, according to a small study presented as a poster presentation at this year’s American Society for Microbiology meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.