News

Pediatrics Update: Amblyopia Therapy Is for Older Children Too

Photoclinic: Plexiform Neurofibroma

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a genetics-based test that detects how certain drugs are utilized in the body. The Invader UGT1A1 Molecular Assay detects variations in the gene UGT1A1, which produces an enzyme that is active in the metabolism of certain drugs, including irinotecan (Camptosar), used to treat colorectal cancer.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health and Scholastic, the global children's publishing and media company, have joined forces to distribute information about the damaging health effects of methamphetamine to nearly 2 million middle- and high-school students and their teachers. The effects of the drug will be covered in an article in the fall issues of Scholastic Classroom Magazines' Junior Scholastic, Science World, CHOICES, SCOPE, ACTION, and UPFRONT during the 2005-2006 school year.

The FDA in September approved the supplemental new drug application of NovoLog, a rapid acting form of insulin for the control of hyperglycemia in patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Manufactured by Novo Nordisk Inc., NovoLog can be administered immediately before a meal.

The rate of melanoma among children and young adults rose dramatically between 1973 and 2001, according to a study in a recent issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. "Between the years 1973 and 2001, the incidence of pediatric melanoma increased 2.9% per year and 46% per year of age," says John Strouse, MD, a pediatric oncologist and instructor in pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University and author of the article.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a genetics-based test that detects how certain drugs are utilized in the body. The Invader UGT1A1 Molecular Assay detects variations in the gene UGT1A1, which produces an enzyme that is active in the metabolism of certain drugs, including irinotecan (Camptosar), used to treat colorectal cancer.

A study of adolescents who lack part of chromosome 22 could lead to identification of a gene suspected of a role in schizophrenia. Findings of that study appear in the November 2005 issue of Nature Neuroscience.Although youths with the 22q11.2 chromosomal deletion syndrome already have a nearly 30-fold higher-than-normal risk of schizophrenia, those who have one of two common sequence versions of the suspect gene are more prone to cognitive decline, psychosis, and frontal-lobe tissue loss by late adolescence. The genetic variant appears to make symptoms of the deletion syndrome worse by chronically boosting the chemical messenger dopamine to an excessive level in the prefrontal cortex during development.

Among life's inevitabilities (along with cell phones that cut out and computers that go down) are employee absences. You have to plan for them. The more jobs your employees can do, the better it is for them, for you, and for your patients.

Screen children and adolescents for risk factors for latent TB infection and active disease, perform a tuberculin skin test if-and only if- a risk factor is present, and treat patients with a positive finding according to strategies discussed here.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder in children can be difficult to distinguish from developmentally normal behavior. The right questions can be revealing—and the right treatments can work.

Today's focus on intense, specialized sports training at younger ages means that children are increasingly susceptible to back injury. The authors provide an overview of the diagnosis and treatment of back pain in child and adolescent athletes, including conditions to consider in the differential.

A five-step approach helps you rule out pathologic headache and start effective management for benign primary headache-all during a typical office visit.

Your patient is a 5-year-old boy who has a fever and is complaining of left flank pain. He looks flushed and is slightly diaphoretic.

Congress ponders Medicare and Medicaid cuts, the push to ban "partial birth abortion" is back in the news, and the FDA offers warnings on two drugs taken by children.