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Vaccinating infants against rotavirus decreases health care use and treatment costs

Vaccinating infants against rotavirus has resulted in dramatic decreases in health care use and treatment costs for diarrhea-related illness in U.S. infants and young children, according to a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The study is published in the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

22 Sep 2011

Leaders address nutrition on sidelines of U.N. NCD meeting

On the sidelines of the U.N. High-level Meeting on Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) on Tuesday, "representatives of governments, civil society and the private sector joined United Nations agencies ... to emphasize the importance of good nutrition, which is vital not only for human health but also for national economic and social development," the U.N. News Centre reports.

22 Sep 2011

HSPH receives CDC grant to evaluate HIV combination prevention initiative in Botswana

A new four-year, $20 million grant from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will enable Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers to evaluate the impact and cost-effectiveness of a unique combination of HIV prevention strategies in Botswana.

22 Sep 2011

Rockefeller: 'Blended rate' proposal could be end of CHIP

The $320 billion package of Medicare and Medicaid cuts President Obama announced yesterday as part of his plan to reduce deficit spending would effectively end the Children's Health Insurance Program, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV said Tuesday. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a leading advocate of the program on Capitol Hill, was referring specifically to a part of the plan, known as the "blended rate" proposal that would start in 2017.

22 Sep 2011

Humour therapy as effective as antipsychotic drugs in managing agitation in dementia patients

Humour therapy is as effective as widely used antipsychotic drugs in managing agitation in patients with dementia - and avoids serious drug side effects, a new study shows.

22 Sep 2011

Molecular pathways could play important role in fight against obesity and diabetes

Researchers at the Joslin Diabetes Center have identified for the first time two molecular pathways that are critical to activating a type of "good" fat found in the body, a discovery that could play an important role in the fight against obesity and diabetes.

22 Sep 2011

U.N. calls for advancement on goal to save women and children; poorest countries, drug company contribute to fight

Speaking at a high-level meeting at U.N. headquarters on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, while lauding the progress made under the Every Woman Every Child initiative since its launch one year ago, noted that millions of women and children "are still dying needless deaths and called for advancing the goal of saving 16 million lives by 2015," the U.N. News Centre reports.

22 Sep 2011

GAVI Alliance cited as “game changer” in international development aid

The heads of the US and UK governments’ aid programmes have recognised the GAVI Alliance as offering ”game changing” lessons in the fight against global poverty.

21 Sep 2011

People should be concerned about flu every year

As temperatures begin to cool, coughing and sneezing inevitably follow. So begins flu season in the United States — and preventable deaths, says David Kimberlin, M.D., University of Alabama at Birmingham professor of pediatrics and president-elect of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

21 Sep 2011

Test to properly diagnose fever in children needed 'desperately'

"[F]ar too many children in Kenya and other African countries continue to suffer unnecessarily each year due to the misdiagnosis of fever, which contributes to the deaths of nearly three million children of less than five years of age from malaria and pneumonia," Willis Akhwale, head of Kenya's Department of Disease Prevention and Control in the Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, writes in a Daily Nation opinion piece.

21 Sep 2011

Combination of SRIs and cognitive behavior therapy reduces pediatric OCD symptoms

Children and teens with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) who were receiving some benefit from treatment with medication had a significantly greater reduction in OCD symptoms with the addition of cognitive behavior therapy, according to a study in the September 21 issue of JAMA.

21 Sep 2011

Study reveals possible new treatment targets for diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas

Study led by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital scientists points to possible new treatment targets for diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas; may tip the scales in the current debate about tumor biopsies.

21 Sep 2011

Three reports evaluate global progress to meet MDGs 4 and 5

Three recent reports -- a one-year assessment released by the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health of the WHO on Tuesday, an analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington published on Tuesday in the Lancet, and a Save the Children report released on Monday entitled "No Child out of Reach" -- examine the progress of the global campaign to save mothers and children under five in developing nations and evaluate whether Millennium Development Goals 4 and 5, reducing child mortality by two-thirds between 1990 and 2015 and maternal deaths by three-quarters over the same period, can be met.

21 Sep 2011

McDonald’s loses heart health ‘tick’ of approval

McDonald's will lose the right to display the National Heart Foundation of Australia's Tick on foods marketed as healthy options. The fast food giant pays about $300,000 a year so it can put the trademarked Tick next to fish burgers, salads and chicken wraps. But the Heart Foundation has told McDonald's it is removing the company's right to use the Tick, which has been used to promote its foods over the past five years.

21 Sep 2011

World leaders should commit to closing health care worker gap

Recent U.N. statistics showing a drop in child mortality are both good and bad, because the number of child deaths continues to drop, but "progress isn't reaching all families around the world, and it isn't reaching newborn babies as often as older children," Joy Lawn, director of Global Evidence and Policy for Save the Children's Saving Newborn Lives program, writes in a GlobalPost opinion piece.

21 Sep 2011

Yoghurt consumption whilst pregnant linked to asthma and hay fever in offsping

Women who eat low-fat yoghurt while pregnant increase their chances of having children who develop asthma and hay fever, a study has found. Belief till now was completely the opposite.

21 Sep 2011

Children of parents with drink problem may consume more alcohol after stressful situations

If either of your parents has a drink problem, there is a greater risk that you will consume more alcohol after stressful situations, reveals current research from the Sahlgrenska Academy, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

21 Sep 2011

Polio in China

Polio has spread to China for the first time since 1999 after being imported from Pakistan, the World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed. It said a strain of polio (WPV1) found in China was genetically linked with the type now circulating in Pakistan. At least seven cases have now been confirmed in China's western Xinjiang province, which borders Pakistan.

21 Sep 2011

Polio in Pakistan prompts India to implement border crossing vaccination campaign

Officials in Pakistan on Monday "announced targeted, three-day anti-polio campaigns in affected areas, which include Karachi and districts in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas," the Wall Street Journal's "India Real Time" blog reports.

21 Sep 2011

African-American men living in low sunlight areas more likely to have Vitamin D deficiency

African-American men living in areas with low sunlight are up to 3 - times more likely to have Vitamin D deficiency than Caucasian men and should take high levels of Vitamin D supplements, according to a new study from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

21 Sep 2011

Children News and Research

Vaccinating infants against rotavirus decreases health care use and treatment costs

Leaders address nutrition on sidelines of U.N. NCD meeting

HSPH receives CDC grant to evaluate HIV combination prevention initiative in Botswana

Rockefeller: 'Blended rate' proposal could be end of CHIP

Humour therapy as effective as antipsychotic drugs in managing agitation in dementia patients

Molecular pathways could play important role in fight against obesity and diabetes

U.N. calls for advancement on goal to save women and children; poorest countries, drug company contribute to fight

GAVI Alliance cited as “game changer” in international development aid

People should be concerned about flu every year

Test to properly diagnose fever in children needed 'desperately'

Combination of SRIs and cognitive behavior therapy reduces pediatric OCD symptoms

Study reveals possible new treatment targets for diffuse intrinsic pontine gliomas

Three reports evaluate global progress to meet MDGs 4 and 5

McDonald’s loses heart health ‘tick’ of approval

World leaders should commit to closing health care worker gap

Yoghurt consumption whilst pregnant linked to asthma and hay fever in offsping

Children of parents with drink problem may consume more alcohol after stressful situations

Polio in China

Polio in Pakistan prompts India to implement border crossing vaccination campaign

African-American men living in low sunlight areas more likely to have Vitamin D deficiency

Bringing real-time analytics to downstream bioprocess monitoring

Designing fluidic architecture for scalable diagnostic platforms

Evaluating new approaches for rare disease genomics

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