Children’s Health

A potentially safer, more effective chemotherapy treatment for patients with blood-related cancers, such as leukemia, who need a particular bone marrow transplant procedure is under study at the University of Arizona Health Sciences. The procedure is known as a haploidentical (half-matched) bone marrow transplantation, or “haplo-BMT,” providng an alternative source of stem cells for patients

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 3 2020 Whether children have ongoing sleep problems from birth through childhood or do not develop sleep problems until they begin school, a new study by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has found that sleep disturbances at any age are associated with diminished well-being by the time the

A mother’s own breast milk has infection-fighting factors and nutrients to help fuel growth and development in babies and may be easier to digest than formula. Providing this nourishment is particularly important for infants born prematurely, both while they are receiving care in a hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and after they are able

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Aug 3 2020 Compared with adults, children and adolescents are less sensitive to the sweet taste and need 40% more sucrose in a solution for them to detect the taste of sugar, a new study found. Along with higher taste-detection thresholds, both children and adolescents prefer significantly more concentrated levels of

A recent meningitis case at Children’s National Hospital raises serious concerns about antibiotic resistance in the common bacterium that caused it, researchers from the hospital write in a case report. Their findings, published online August 3 in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society, could change laboratory and clinical practice across the U.S. and

Researchers in Italy have reported on the success of the contact tracing efforts made to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak in the province of Trento during phase I (March to April) of the epidemic. The contact tracing involved new software that enabled the surveillance of people who had been in contact with infected

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 31 2020 John Franchak has long been interested in how learning a new motor skill, such as sitting or walking, changes how infants interact with their surroundings. He has now been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue this research question. The four-year grant of nearly $755,000

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 31 2020 Researchers led by a team at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science have devised a new therapeutic approach to treating a rare but deadly neurodegenerative genetic disease in children. The study, published this week in Nature Medicine, addresses the urgent need to discover treatments for Batten disease,

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 31 2020 Continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) tracks glucose levels of people with type I or type II diabetes through a device that monitors levels throughout the day. These devices improve control of blood sugar levels by alerting patients when their levels go too high or low, but patients need to

A new study by researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Brookhaven National Laboratory and published on the preprint server medRxiv* in July 2020 discusses the effect of a factor called persistent contact heterogeneity on the final epidemic size of COVID-19. The researchers say that using estimates based on this measure reduces the herd

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to wreak havoc across the globe, it has been thought that children mostly seemed to be spared by severe illness. In the majority of cases, children infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) only develop a mild illness, with some tagged as asymptomatic. Now, new evidence

Doctoral candidate of the Education Programme of Castellón’s Jaume I University (UJI), Juan Vives Vilarroig, has highlighted in his thesis the importance of working on basic aspects such as balance and postural control to improve sensory integration in children with autism spectrum disorders, using horses as the main elements of this intervention. Resesarch project “Efectos

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 30 2020 In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed only rarely to have serious complications in children. However, by April 2020, pediatricians had begun recognizing a syndrome in children who tested positive for COVID-19 involving hyperinflammation and some other attributes found in Kawasaki disease (KD).

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 30 2020 The Faculty of Medicine has awarded 58 clinical research chairs to top clinician-scientists in a five-year, $40 million investment to drive clinical research excellence and enhance health and patient care. The University of Ottawa Faculty of Medicine Clinical Research Chairs span four categories — Distinguished, Tier 1, Tier

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 30 2020 A study conducted over the past 18 years has found differences between lead exposure effects in young Japanese boys versus girls. Researchers from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine have been tracking 289 children in Japan since they were in the womb through age 12. They measured

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 29 2020 Boston Medical Center’s StreetCred program has been named to the second cohort of the Aspen Family Prosperity Innovation Community, an Aspen Institute initiative for breakthrough innovations and collaborations that position families to reach educational success, economic prosperity, and health and well-being. The launch of this community, Ascend, could

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named two outstanding young scientists as recipients of the Damon Runyon-Sohn Pediatric Cancer Fellowship Award, committing nearly $500,000 to help address a critical shortage of funding for pediatric cancer research. The Fellowship Award provides funding to basic scientists and clinicians who conduct research with the potential to significantly

A study conducted over the past 18 years has found differences between lead exposure effects in young Japanese boys versus girls. Researchers from the Tohoku University Graduate School of Medicine have been tracking 289 children in Japan since they were in the womb through age 12. They measured lead levels in blood at a prenatal

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Jul 29 2020 Black and Hispanic pregnant women in Philadelphia are five times as likely as white and Asian women to have been exposed to the novel coronavirus, according to a new study led by Scott Hensley, PhD, an associate professor of Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the

A new technique that can spot a potential preterm birth in asymptomatic high-risk women, with up to 73% accuracy months before delivery, has been developed by scientists at the University of Warwick. Utilising cutting-edge volatile organic compound analysis technology, designed to characterise airborne chemicals, the scientists ‘trained’ the device using machine-learning techniques to identify the