Human Biology

Babies born extremely prematurely may be left with lung abnormalities
in adulthood, such as emphysema, Australian researchers have found.
The study, funded by the Raine Foundation, followed up babies born up
to four months premature in the 1980s and weighing as little as 635
g. All of the young adults taking part in the study had abnormal CT
scans of their lungs. 84% had areas of emphysema and 75% had abnormal
lung function tests, the researchers report in the upcoming issue of
the European Respiratory Journal (ERJ).

Due to major improvements in neonatal care since the 1980s, an ever
increasing number of babies are surviving extreme prematurity, and
many have respiratory difficulties as infants. The first babies to
benefit from this improved care are only now reaching adulthood.
“This study reinforces the importance of stopping, or preferably
never taking up, cigarette smoking, particularly if there is a
history of preterm birth,” Daniel Chambers of the Prince Charles
Hospital and Andrew Wilson of the Princess Margaret and Royal Perth
Hospitals in Australia said. “Overall, most of the subjects in this
study had good, if not entirely normal, lung function despite having
a very difficult time as babies.”

The authors stress that the results are preliminary and much larger
studies are required before accurate predictions can be made about
how an individual baby’s lungs will develop.

Nevertheless, Chambers states, “I think we can provide some
reassurance for individuals and the parents of babies being born
prematurely today that despite the ventilator, and then the 24-hour-a-
day oxygen even when they’ve finally made it home, your baby has a
great chance of having good lung health in adulthood.”

Since the adults in this study were born there have been further
improvements in neonatal care, so hopefully outcomes will be even
better in the future.
The researchers are now conducting a larger study in Queensland and
Western Australia.

Title of Original Article
Emphysema in young adult survivors of moderate-to-severe bronchopulmonary
dysplasia
European Respiratory Journal (Erj), Vol. 32, No 2

The European Respiratory Journal is the peer-reviewed scientific
publication of the European Respiratory Society (more than 8,000
specialists in lung diseases and respiratory medicine in Europe, the
United States and Australia).

European Respiratory Journal

Tuomas Jartti (University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA) and his team
examined detailed viral aetiologies of recurrent moderate-to-severe
respiratory illnesses in 27 infants from families with allergies or
asthma.

The demographic and clinical data of these recurrently ill infants
were compared with 258 children with fewer illnesses.

This is the first long-term prospective study using virus strain
specific diagnostics for rhinoviruses, and it reveals several
interesting findings.

First, frequently ill infants had higher exposure to other children
and more wheezing illnesses than less symptomatic children.
In addition, rhinoviruses were the most common virus detected, and
could be associated with wheezing illnesses, as well as milder common
colds.

Mixed viral infections were fairly common in these frequently ill
infants, and were associated with more severe symptoms.
Finally, detection of the same virus strain for more than two weeks
was unusual (only 5% of all 244 positive findings) and most prolonged
illnesses were caused by consecutive infections with different viruses.

In conclusion, this study demonstrates that rhinovirus infections
occur early, pervasively, and repetitively in these high-risk infants
and that prolonged illnesses in this age group are usually caused by
a series of infections, rather than extending infection with a single
virus.

Title of Original Article
Serial viral infections in infants with recurrent respiratory illnesses
European Respiratory Journal (Erj), Vol. 32, No 2

The European Respiratory Journal is the peer-reviewed scientific
publication of the European Respiratory Society (more than 8,000
specialists in lung diseases and respiratory medicine in Europe, the
United States and Australia).

European Respiratory Journal

Have a cookie before breast-feeding, mom? Eating special cookies enriched with conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) can increase the level of these potentially healthful fatty acids in breast milk, reports a recent study in the journal Nutrition Research.

Led by Athena A. Moutsioulis of University of New Hampshire, the researchers designed a study to find out how long it takes for CLA that mothers eat in foods to appear in breast milk. Conjugated linoleic acid is a group of fatty acids with possible health benefits, including anticancer and antioxidant effects.

In the study, seven nursing mothers ate cookies made with CLA-enriched butter or with regular butter. The women then pumped samples of their breast milk every four to six hours for two days. The enriched cookies contained about eight times more CLA than the regular cookies.

Breast milk from women who ate the CLA-enriched cookies had significantly higher levels of CLA. Across the 48-hour study period, CLA levels were 46 percent higher in milk from women who ate CLA-enriched cookies, compared to those who ate regular cookies. Levels of CLA in breast milk were highest between 8 and 28 hours after the mothers ate the CLA-enriched cookies. Nutrition researchers are interested in the health benefits of CLA, including possible reductions in heart disease risk. High levels of CLA are found naturally in foods such as butter, milk, cheese, and certain meats. Most CLA studies in humans have used commercially available supplements, which may not be the same as the CLA found in natural food products.

Previous studies have shown long-term increases in breast milk CLA levels in women who ate cheese and alpine butter for up to eight weeks. The new results suggest that higher levels of CLA in breast milk can be achieved in the short term as well – within a few hours after eating CLA-enriched foods.

Despite its small size and other limitations, this pilot study suggests that CLA appearance in human breast milk can be increased by an acute ingestion of a CLA-rich food in the maternal diet,” the researchers write. Given the possible benefits of CLA on infant health and development, further studies are needed to see how CLA intake from natural foods affects CLA levels in breast milk, and whether higher CLA levels translate into additional health benefits for breast-fed babies.

###

Notes:

The article appears in the July issue of Nutrition Research, published by Elsevier.

About Nutrition Research

Nutrition Research (nrjournal/) rapidly publishes original papers and review articles covering basic and applied research on all aspects of the nutritional sciences. It includes articles on nutritional biochemistry and metabolism; nutrient requirements in health and disease; digestion and absorption of foods; nutritional anthropology and epidemiology; the influence of socioeconomic, cultural and political factors on nutrition of the individual and the community; the impact of nutrient intake on disease response, work performance and behavior; the consequences of nutritional deficiency on growth and development, endocrines, nervous system and immunity; food intolerance and allergy; nutrient drug interactions; nutrition and aging; nutrition and cancer; obesity; intervention programs.

About Elsevier

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. Working in partnership with the global science and health communities, Elsevier’s 7,000 employees in over 70 offices worldwide publish more than 2,000 journals and 1,900 new books per year, in addition to offering a suite of innovative electronic products, such as ScienceDirect (sciencedirect/), MD Consult (mdconsult/), Scopus (info.scopus/), bibliographic databases, and online reference works.

Elsevier (elsevier/) is a global business headquartered in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and has offices worldwide. Elsevier is part of Reed Elsevier Group plc (reedelsevier/), a world-leading publisher and information provider. Operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business sectors, Reed Elsevier provides high-quality and flexible information solutions to users, with increasing emphasis on the Internet as a means of delivery. Reed Elsevier’s ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

Source: Jayne Dawkins

Elsevier

A new analysis of a 2005 survey of American schoolchildren has identified factors that may be used to help improve school safety. The research, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Annals of General Psychiatry, gives detailed information about the carrying of guns, blades and clubs.

13,707 students participated in the study, 6,664 (50.5%) were male and 7,193 (49.5%) were females. Overall, 10.2% of males and 2.6% of females reported carrying a weapon on school property. An estimated 29.8% of males and 19.3% of females had carried weapons elsewhere.

The analysis was carried out by Emmanuel Rudatsikira, from the Loma Linda University, California, and his colleagues. They showed that the variables most associated with the carrying of weapons were being male and being a member of certain self-selected racial groups. Pupils who identified themselves as white were more likely to carry weapons than those who identified themselves as black.

The authors point out that, “We do not believe that there are any inherent genetic differences that determine race and that affect the way that adolescents behave. We take the view that racial categorization has facilitated the distribution of social and economic resources (housing, school districts, wealth, social networks) that may consequently influence adolescent behaviors and perceptions toward violent behavior”.

The results were surprising. The authors state that as the poor are likely to live in violent neighbourhoods, they would be more likely to feel unsafe and therefore carry weapons to school, “We would have expected that minorities such as African Americans, being largely disadvantaged in the United States, would be more likely to bear weapons.” Rudatsikira suggests some explanations for this apparent discrepancy “If black students felt less threatened at school, it’s less likely they’ll carry weapons. Alternatively, the schools they attend may be more vigilant in policing weapon carrying as a possible result of high violence and weapon bearing in black neighbourhoods.”

Other factors associated with weapon carrying were substance use, depression, having been a victim of theft or property damage at school, having been raped, having been threatened with a weapon or having been involved in a physical fight.

###

Notes:

1. Correlates of weapon carrying among high school students in the United States
Adamson S Muula, Emmanuel Rudatsikira and Seter Siziya
Annals of General Psychiatry 2008, 7:8 doi:10.1186/1744-859X-7-8

Article available at the journal website: annals-general-psychiatry/content/7/1/8

All articles are available free of charge, according to BioMed Central’s open access policy.

2. Annals of General Psychiatry is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal covering the wider field of Psychiatry, Neurosciences and Psychological Medicine.

Annals of General Psychiatry is aimed at publishing articles on all aspects of psychiatry. Primary research articles are our priority. Both basic and clinical neuroscience contributions are encouraged. The journal strongly supports and follows the principles of evidence-based medicine.

3. BioMed Central (biomedcentral/) is an independent online publishing house committed to providing immediate access without charge to the peer-reviewed biological and medical research it publishes. This commitment is based on the view that open access to research is essential to the rapid and efficient communication of science.

Source: Graeme Baldwin


BioMed Central

A national analysis of physician office and emergency department records shows that the types of skin infections caused by community-acquired MRSA doubled in the eight-year study period, with the highest rates seen among children and in urban emergency rooms.

The study, conducted at the University of California, San Francisco, examined annual data from the National Center for Health Statistics of patient visits for skin and soft-tissue infections from 1997 to 2005. The results appear in the July 28, 2008 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

During that time period, office and emergency room visits for all skin infections rose from 8.6 million nationwide to 14.2 million, according to Adam Hersh, MD, PhD, lead author on the paper and a fellow in the divisions of general pediatrics and of pediatric infectious diseases at UCSF.

The vast majority of that increase was attributable to visits for abscesses or cellulitis, which Hersh called the hallmark signs of infections from the variety of staph bacteria known as MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Those infections rose from 4.6 million to 9.6 million during the study period.

“This shows that community-acquired MRSA infections are occurring nationwide and affect all subsets of the population,” Hersh said. “But there clearly are some subsets that are disproportionately affected, such as children.”

The increase was predominantly seen among children and among patients who visit emergency rooms in urban areas at so-called safety net hospitals. Those are hospitals in which at least half of the patients receive Medicaid or are uninsured.

From 1997 to 2005, the number of visits for abscesses or cellulitis nearly quadrupled in safety-net emergency departments, from 1.3 people per 1,000 total population to 4.9. Among children, the incidence nearly tripled from 10.1 patients per 1,000 children to 27.6. By contrast, incident rates among patients older than 45 rose less than 50 percent, from 27.9 to 41.3 patients per 1,000 adults in that age group.

By comparison, the number of patients who sought medical care for any skin infection rose from a rate of 32.1 to 48.1 visits per 1,000 people during the same period.

Previous studies at UCSF and other urban medical centers have indicated that MRSA had begun to spread outside hospital settings in the late 1990s, but until now, no one had been able to verify those suspicions with hard data or to indicate the extent of MRSA nationwide, Hersh said. There also was no way of assessing whether the rise was due to population shifts or to people visiting emergency rooms instead of family physicians.

“This validates what San Francisco physicians have been suspecting for several years,” says Henry Chambers, MD, a co-author of the study and UCSF professor of medicine at San Francisco General Hospital. “This is the first national report to look at the impact of MRSA on public health nationwide.”

Chambers is lead scientist of a large multi-centered clinical trial recently funded by the National Institutes of Health to study treatment of community-acquired MRSA infections.

While the rate of this rise is dramatic, public health researchers say these infections can be limited with simple behavioral changes in hygiene.

“This is certainly a cause for increased awareness among clinicians and the public nationwide, but it is not cause for alarm,” said Erica Pan, MD, MPH, a UCSF assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases and a medical epidemiologist at the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Pan was not involved in this study, but works frequently with the UCSF team on MRSA research.

“A simple way to avoid these and many other infections is to practice good hygiene habits, such as routine hand-washing with soap and water, as well as by covering open cuts and wounds when participating in sports or other activities involving skin-to-skin contact with other people,” she said. “If you notice that you or your child has a skin infection that does not seem to get better on its own after a few days, consult a medical provider.”

The study also found a shift in prescribing practices among physicians seeing these patients. The number of prescriptions written for medications effective against MRSA infections more than tripled over the study period. At the start of the study, less than 8 percent of antibiotics prescribed nationwide for skin infections were those effective for MRSA infections. By 2005, 28 percent were in that category.

“We had anticipated seeing a rise in office visits for abscesses due to the emergence of community-acquired MRSA, but we were somewhat surprised by the rapid changes in antibiotic prescribing,” Hersh said. “It is evidence of growing awareness of community-acquired MRSA nationwide among physicians.”

Hersh acknowledged that the data, which is the most recent available, is too old to show what is happening right now, or even last month, but does confirm that the emergence of community-acquired MRSA in the 1990s led to a rapid increase in the number of patients with skin and soft tissue infections nationwide.

It also raises opportunities for further research, including determining the risk factors for developing an abscess and how best to care for patients with recurrent infections, he said.

###

Ralph Gonzales, MD, MSPH, a professor in the UCSF departments of medicine and of epidemiology and biostatistics, is the senior author on the paper. It was co-authored by Judith H. Maselli, MSPH, also with UCSF.

The research was supported by a grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

The San Francisco Department of Public health has further information on preventing MRSA infections and “Frequently Asked Questions” on its web site at www.mrsasf.

UCSF is a leading university dedicated to promoting health worldwide through advanced biomedical research, graduate-level education in the life sciences and health professions, and excellence in patient care. For further information, please visit ucsf.edu/.

Source: Kristen Bole

University of California – San Francisco

The My Child Matters program is part of the International Union Against
Cancer’s (UICC) campaign and is dedicated to improving information
dissemination about cancer in children to health professionals and the
general public, to improve early diagnosis and access to care, and to
support children with cancer and their families in the developing
world. The first report from the My Child Matters program, published in
the August edition of The Lancet Oncology, found
that low- and middle-income countries still have poor pediatric cancer
survival rates. The descriptive study also found that the level of
pediatric cancer care and available resources is highly variable
between countries.

This first report from the program focuses on data collected between
Sept 5, 2005 and May 26, 2006. Prof Raul Ribeiro (St Jude
Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA) and colleagues studied
pediatric oncology care and 5-year survival in ten countries that
received support from My Child Matters. These low- to middle-income
countries included:

Bangladesh
Egypt
Honduras
Morocco
The Philippines
Senegal
Tanzania
Ukraine
Venezuela
Vietnam

The researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with clinicians,
hospital managers, health officials, and other health-care
professionals in order to gather data on several important elements of
pediatric care and to gather baseline survival data for use in future
comparative studies. They focused on the availability of national
pediatric cancer programs, hospital units dedicated to pediatric
cancer, tools for diagnostic work, and drugs to fight cancer
as well as antibiotics. The data were also compared with national
incidence data for pediatric cancer acquired from the population-based
registries in order to make sure that the survey provided accurate and
relevant data. The survey data were also correlated with variables that
described demographic, health, and socioeconomic factors derived from
global health organizations.

One conclusion of the study was that between countries, there was a
large variation in pediatric oncology care. Additionally, there often
was no agreement between the number of patients reported receiving
medical care in the program survey and the official number predicted by
the population-based incidence data. In 70% of the countries, the
authors labeled the access to pediatric care or management as extremely
poor. Five-year survival rates were estimated to be:

5% to 10% in Bangladesh, the Philippines, Senegal,
Tanzania, and Vietnam
30% in Morocco
40% to 60% in Egypt, Honduras, the Ukraine, and Venezuela

Correlations demonstrated that survival varies directly with several
variables including: per capita annual total health-care expenditure,
per capita gross domestic product, per capita gross national
income, number of physicians and nurses per 1000 population,
and annual government health-care expenditure per capita.

“Detailed surveys can provide useful data for baseline assessment of
the status of paediatric oncology, but cannot substitute for national
cancer registration. Alliances between public, private, and
international agencies might rapidly improve the outcome of children
with cancer in these countries,” conclude the researchers.

Baseline status of paediatric oncology care in ten low-income
or mid-income countries receiving My Child Matters support: a
descriptive study
Raul C Ribeiro, Eva Steliarova-Foucher, Ian Magrath, Jean
Lemerle, Tim Eden, Caty Forget, Isabel Mortara, Isabelle Tabah-Fisch,
Jose Julio Divino, Thomas Miklavec, Scott C Howard, Franco Cavalli
The Lancet Oncology (2008). Vol 9:
pp. 721-9.
Click
Here to View Journal Web Site

: Peter M Crosta

Scientists at Stanford University School of Medicine have discovered that a commonly available non-addictive drug can prevent symptoms of withdrawal from opioids with little likelihood of serious side effects. The drug, ondansetron, which is already approved to treat nausea and vomiting, appears to avoid some of the problems that accompany existing treatments for addiction to these powerful painkillers, the scientists said.

Opioids encompass a diverse array of prescription and illegal drugs, including codeine, morphine and heroin. In 2007, about 12.5 million Americans aged 12 and older used prescription pain medications for non-medical purposes, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, administered by the federal government’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

“Opioid abuse is rising at a faster rate than any other type of illicit drug use, yet only about a quarter of those dependent on opioids seek treatment,” said Larry F. Chu, MD, assistant professor of anesthesia at the School of Medicine and lead author of the study that will be published online Feb. 17 in the Journal of Pharmacogenetics and Genomics. “One barrier to treatment is that when you abruptly stop taking the drugs, there is a constellation of symptoms associated with withdrawal.” Chu described opioid withdrawal as a “bad flu,” characterized by agitation, insomnia, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

Current methods of treatment are not completely effective, according to Chu. One drug used for withdrawal, clonidine, requires close medical supervision as it can cause severe side effects, while two others, methadone and buprenorphine, don’t provide a satisfactory solution because they act through the same mechanism as the abused drugs. “It’s like replacing one drug with another,” said co-investigator Gary Peltz, MD, PhD, professor of anesthesia.

“What we need is a magic bullet,” said Chu. “Something that treats the symptoms of withdrawal, does not lead to addiction and can be taken at home.”

The researchers’ investigation led them to the drug ondansetron, after they determined that it would block certain receptors involved in withdrawal symptoms.

The scientists were able to make this connection thanks to their having a good animal model for opioid dependence. Mice given morphine for several days develop the mouse equivalent of addiction. Researchers then stop providing morphine to trigger withdrawal symptoms. Strikingly, these mice, when placed into a plastic cylinder, will start to jump into the air. One can measure how dependent these mice are by counting how many times they jump. Like humans, dependent mice also become very sensitive to pain when they stop receiving morphine.

But the responses vary among the laboratory animals. There are “different flavors of mice,” explained Peltz. “Some strains of mice are more likely to become dependent on opioids.” By comparing the withdrawal symptoms and genomes of these different strains, it’s possible to figure out which genes play a major role in addiction.

To accomplish this feat, Peltz and his colleagues used a powerful computational “haplotype-based” genetic mapping method that he had recently developed, which can sample a large portion of the genome within just a few hours. This method pinpoints genes responsible for the variation in withdrawal symptoms across these strains of mice.

The analysis revealed an unambiguous result: One particular gene determined the severity of withdrawal. That gene codes for the 5-HT3 receptor, a protein that responds to the brain-signaling chemical serotonin.

To confirm these results, the researchers injected the dependent mice with ondansetron, a drug that specifically blocks 5-HT3 receptors. The drug significantly reduced the jumping behavior of mice as well as pain sensitivity – two signs of addiction.

The scientists were able to jump from “from mouse to man” by sheer luck: It turns out that ondansetron is already on the market for the treatment of pain and nausea. As a result, they were able to immediately use this drug, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, in eight healthy, non-opioid-dependent humans. In one session, they received only a single large dose of morphine, and in another session that was separated by at least week, they took ondansetron in combination with morphine. They were then given questionnaires to assess their withdrawal symptoms.

Similar to mice, humans treated with ondansetron before or while receiving morphine showed a significant reduction in withdrawal signs compared with when they received morphine but not ondansetron. “A major accomplishment of this study was to take lab findings and translate them to humans,” said principal investigator J. David Clark, MD, PhD, professor of anesthesia at Stanford University School of Medicine and the Palo Alto Veterans Affairs Health Care System.

Chu plans on conducting a clinical study to confirm the effectiveness of another ondansetron-like drug in treating opioid withdrawal symptoms in a larger group of healthy humans. And the research team will continue to test the effectiveness of ondansetron in treating opioid addiction.

The scientists warned that ondansetron will not by itself resolve the problems that arise with continued use of these painkillers. Addiction is a long-term, complex process, involving both physical and psychological factors that lead to compulsive drug use. “This is not a cure for addiction,” said Clark. “It’s naГЇve to think that any one receptor is a panacea for treatment. Treating the withdrawal component is only one way of alleviating the suffering. With luck and determination, we can identify additional targets and put together a comprehensive treatment program.”

Collaborators on this study included De-Yong Liang, PhD, the study’s co-lead author, previously a research associate in the Department of Anesthesia and currently a research associate at the Palo Alto Institute for Research and Education; Xiangqi Li, MD, a life science research assistant in the department; Nicole D’Arcy, a medical student: Peyman Sahbaie, MD, a research associate at the institute; and Guochun Liao, PhD, of the pharmaceutical company Hoffman-La Roche. This work was supported by grants to Clark from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and grants to Chu from the NIH and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

The researchers are working with the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing to seek a patent for the use of ondansetron and related medicines in the treatment of drug addiction.
What are Opioids?
For more information on what opioids are, and opioid-induced constipation (OIC), please see:
All About Opioids and Opioid-Induced Constipation (OIC)

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions – Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center’s Office of Communication & Public Affairs at mednews.stanford.edu.

Source: Rosanne Spector

Stanford University Medical Center

Specific aspects of our personalities may be influenced directly by
events that occurred in our childhoods, according to study conducted in
rats described in an article released on July 29, 2008 in the
open-access journal PLoS ONE.

Using a rat model, scientists at the University
of New Mexico Psychology Department and Rockefeller
University examined how early life experiences can influence the social
skills and abilities in stressful situations. In this study, a group of
young rats was removed from the home environment during infancy in the
first three weeks of life and thus exposed to novel inputs during
infancy. The cumulative time spent outside the home environment was
approximately 60 minutes.

Subsequently, when observed in adult life at 24 months of age, they
were set to compete against one another for a chocolate reward. Mice
who were exposed to novelty as infants were able to beat competitors
more often than their unexposed siblings. Furthermore, across repeated
sessions, the novelty-exposed rats had lower levels of stress hormones
released into the bloodstream, a finding which suggest that they
adapted faster to the stressful situation. These findings indicate that
even very brief exposures to a new environment in infancy can impact
social competitive ability and the stress response throughout life.

Following this, the researchers investigated whether the siblings had
different adult traits depending on the care received from their
mothers in infancy. To do this, they measured how much the mother rats
licked and groomed each pup after a novelty exposure procedure, and how
consistent this care was. The mother rats that delivered more total
care to their pups were generally less consistent in giving care
between different days. Novelty-exposed rats had better adaptive stress
responses if their mothers gave consistent but lower total levels of
care.

The implications that this research has on the understanding of human
personalities can be difficult, but according to the researchers, it
does indicate the pattern and consistency of maternal care may have a
strong influence on a child’s development. This is contrast to some
previous beliefs that the overall amount of care from the mother is the
important factor.

About PLoS ONE

All works published in PLoS
ONE are open-access. Everything is immediately
available – to read, download, redistribute, include in databases and
otherwise use – without cost to anyone, anywhere, subject only to the
condition that the original authorship and source are properly
attributed. Copyright is retained by the authors. The Public Library of
Science uses the Creative Commons Attribution License.

PLoS ONE is the first journal of primary research
from all areas of science to employ both pre- and post-publication peer
review to maximize the impact of every report it publishes. PLoS
ONE is published by the Public Library of Science (PLoS), the
Open-access publisher whose goal is to make the world’s scientific and
medical literature a public resource.

About the University of New Mexico

The
University of New Mexico
is the state’s largest university, serving
more than 32,000 students. UNM is home to the state’s only schools of
law, medicine, pharmacy and architecture and operates New Mexico’s
only academic health center. UNM is noted for comprehensive
undergraduate programs and research that benefits the state and the
nation.

Social
Competitiveness and Plasticity of Neuroendocrine Function in Old Age:
Influence of Neonatal Novelty Exposure and Maternal Care Reliability.
Akers KG, Yang Z, DelVecchio DP, Reeb BC, Romeo RD, et al.
PLoS ONE 3(7): e2840.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0002840
Click
Here For Full Length Article

Anna Sophia McKenney

An estimated 2 million children in developing countries die each year from diarrhea, but simple zinc treatment could reduce the risk of such deaths.

Researchers reached this conclusion in a new review of studies involving more than 6,000 children of all ages.

“Our most important finding is that there is strong evidence that zinc supplementation benefits children suffering from diarrhea in developing countries, but only in infants over six months old,” said lead investigator Marzia Lazzerini, M.D. “Zinc reduces acute diarrhea duration in terms of mean duration and risk of diarrhea at given days. Zinc also reduces the duration of persistent diarrhea.”

Nearly 30 percent of children in the world are zinc deficient, Lazzerini said. She is a pediatrician with the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Maternal and Child Health in Trieste, Italy.

Zinc deficiency is due primarily to inadequate dietary intake. Relatively expensive foods such as meat and fish contain high levels of zinc, the authors say. Although zinc also appears in cheap foods such as nuts, seeds, legumes and whole grain cereal, these foods can reduce absorption of zinc by the body. Zinc cannot be stored in the body.

“The addition of zinc to children in developing countries is rational and appropriate,” said William Cochran, M.D., who had no affiliation with the review. “Diarrhea is a contributing factor to the death of millions of children every year throughout the world. It contributes to death in children in the U.S. much less frequently, 100 to 500 [cases] per year,” said Cochran, a pediatric gastroenterologist and nutritionist and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Geisinger Clinic in Danville, PA.

The review appears in the current issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates medical research. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content and quality of existing medical trials on a topic.

The reviewers identified 18 randomized controlled trials enrolling 6,165 children and comparing zinc treatment with placebo. Thirteen trials focused on treatment of acute diarrhea and the other five on treatment of persistent diarrhea.

The reviewers found zinc was effective for diarrhea in children over six months old. By the third day of zinc treatment, children were 31 percent less likely to suffer from acute diarrhea (in two studies) and were 45 percent less likely to do so after five days of treatment (also in two studies), Lazzerini said.

“This benefit withstood extensive subgroup analysis for nutritional status, geographic region, background zinc deficiency, zinc type and study setting,” the authors say.

Zinc also reduced diarrhea at by 29 percent after a week of treatment. Diarrhea at day seven can be a signal of persistent diarrhea, which can lead to severe dehydration and death.

Two of the studies included children younger than six months. The results showed no evidence of a therapeutic effect of zinc treatment in these children.

The authors said there were insufficient data to gauge the influence of zinc treatment on death, since the studies under review did not measure mortality. “The trials were not designed to look at hospitalization and mortality, but given these results, it’s expected that a policy of zinc supplementation to all children over six months with diarrhea in developing countries could also reduce hospitalization rate and mortality,” they concluded.

“Anything that can be done to limit diarrhea and, as a result, not limit the consumption of regular food may be of help in improving the high death rate associated with diarrhea in underdeveloped countries,” Cochran said.

Lazzerini M, Ronfani L. Oral zinc for treating diarrhoea in children (Review). Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008, Issue 3.

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international nonprofit, independent organization that produces and disseminates systematic reviews of health care interventions and promotes the search for evidence in the form of clinical trials and other studies of interventions. Visit cochrane for more information.

Health Behavior News Service
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Babies born too soon and too small accounted for a growing proportion of infant deaths, according to new statistics released from the National Center for Health Statistics, (NCHS).

Babies who died of preterm-related causes accounted for 36.5 percent of infant deaths in 2005, up from 34.6 percent in 2000, according to “Infant Mortality Statistics from the 2005 Period Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set,” Vol. 57, No. 2, of the National Vital Statistics Report, released today by the NCHS.

The nation’s infant mortality rate inched up slightly in 2005 to 6.9, from 6.8 percent in 2004, although the change is not statistically significant, according to the report. While the infant mortality rate dropped more than 9 percent between 1995 and 2005, the changes since 2000 have not been statistically significant.

“Essentially, there has been no improvement in the infant death rate since 2000, and the increase in the proportion of infants who die from preterm-related causes is troubling,” said Joann Petrini, Ph.D., director of the March of Dimes Perinatal Data Center. “Preventing preterm birth is crucial to reducing the nation’s infant mortality rate and giving every baby a healthy start in life.”

More than a half million babies are born premature (less than 37 weeks gestation) each year and those who survive face the risk of life long health consequences, such as breathing and feeding problems, cerebral palsy, and learning problems.

Mortality rates for infants born even a few weeks early, or “late preterm” (between 34у€ћђ weeks of gestation) were three times those for full-term infants.

The NCHS report found that the mortality rate for very low birthweight infants (those weighing less than 1,500 grams or three and a third pounds) has not changed since 2000, despite rapid improvement between 1983 and 2000. The mortality rate for this group of infants was more than 100 times the rate for normal birthweights infants (at or more than 2,500 grams or five and half pounds).

Low birthweight and preterm birth are leading causes of infant mortality and the rates of both have increased steadily since the mid-1980s. The rise in multiple births from the increased use of assisted reproductive technology and increases in cesarean sections and inductions of labor for preterm infants have contributed to this increase.

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The March of Dimes is committed to preventing preterm birth and has extended its Prematurity Campaign by 10 years to 2020 and pledged to address preterm birth globally. The expansion, announced in June at the Surgeon General’s Conference on Prevention of Preterm Birth, supports the national action plan created during the two-day conference that addressed the growing crisis of preterm birth.

The March of Dimes is the leading nonprofit organization for pregnancy and baby health. With chapters nationwide, the March of Dimes works to improve the health of babies by preventing birth defects, premature birth and infant mortality. For the latest resources and information, visit marchofdimes/ or nacersano/. For detailed national, state and county perinatal data visit marchofdimes/peristats.

Source: Elizabeth Lynch

March of Dimes Foundation