(Press-News.org) Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, children's hospitals across the United States have seen signification reductions in the number of children being treated for common pediatric illnesses like asthma and pneumonia, according to a new multicenter study led by Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt.
Researchers at Children's Hospital found that 42% fewer children were being seen and hospitalized at 44 children's hospital across the U.S. for both respiratory and non-respiratory illnesses, with the most significant reduction seen in children under age 12. Hospitals saw a decline in the number of children seen or hospitalized for respiratory illness by 62%, while there was 38% reduction for non-respiratory illnesses.
The trend, they believe, is likely linked to public health measures instituted during the COVID-19 pandemic -- masking, social distancing and handwashing -- as well as reduced school and extracurricular activities among children and adolescents.
The study, "The COVID-19 Pandemic and Changes in Healthcare Utilization for Pediatric Respiratory and Non-Respiratory Illnesses in the United States," published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.
"We found substantial decreases in health care encounters for respiratory and non-respiratory illnesses at children's hospitals across the U.S. The declines were larger for respiratory than non-respiratory illnesses," said lead study author James Antoon, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Pediatrics in the Hospital Medicine Program at Children's Hospital.
"This likely reflects reduced transmission of common respiratory pathogens resulting from pandemic response measures. For example, we found striking reductions in ED visits and hospitalizations for common pediatric illnesses such as asthma, pneumonia and influenza. Respiratory illnesses are the most common cause of ED visits and hospitalizations in children," Antoon added.
The large multicenter study evaluated emergency department visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and non-respiratory illness at 44 U.S. children's hospitals during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.
Using data reported to the Pediatric Health Information System database maintained by the Children's Hospital Association, researchers looked at children ages 2 months to 18 years who had been discharged from an ED or inpatient setting with a non-surgical diagnosis between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, comparing encounter volumes in 2020 with average volumes for 2017-19.
During the study period when COVID was widespread (May-September), researchers found the overall reductions for ED visits/hospitalizations for each respiratory illness across all age groups varied by type: asthma-related encounters dropped by 76%; pneumonia dropped by 81%; croup by 84%; influenza by 87%; and bronchiolitis by 91%.
When comparing age groups, the study found that adolescents had smaller reductions in both respiratory and non-respiratory illnesses compared to younger children.
"The changes in health care visits varied by age," Antoon said. "Adolescents had smaller reductions in both respiratory and non-respiratory illnesses compared to younger children, and their rates of respiratory illnesses increased at the end of the study period. Our findings suggest that the adolescent population is an important target for community-based prevention efforts to limit the spread of future respiratory illnesses."
Researchers say that further study is needed to continue to understand the reasons why fewer children went to the ED or had to be hospitalized and to evaluate if families sought treatment in alternative care settings such as telehealth visits.
INFORMATION:
Other Vanderbilt researchers involved in the study include Derek Williams, MD, MPH, associate professor of Pediatrics and chief of the Division of Pediatric Hospital Medicine, and Carlos Grijalva, MD, MPH, associate professor of Health Policy.
University of Arizona researcher Jekan Thanga is taking scientific inspiration from an unlikely source: the biblical tale of Noah's Ark. Rather than two of every animal, however, his solar-powered ark on the moon would store cryogenically frozen seed, spore, sperm and egg samples from 6.7 million Earth species.
Thanga and a group of his undergraduate and graduate students outline the lunar ark concept, which they call a "modern global insurance policy," in a paper presented over the weekend during the IEEE Aerospace Conference.
"Earth is naturally a volatile environment," said Thanga, a professor of aerospace and mechanical engineering in the UArizona College ...
Neuroendocrine tumours are cancers that begin in specialised cells called neuroendocrine cells. These cells have traits similar to those of nerve cells and hormone-producing cells. Neuroendocrine tumours, while rare, can occur anywhere in the body. Most affect the cardiothoracic region, eg lungs, appendix, small intestine, pancreas as well as the rectum. There are many types of neuroendocrine tumours: some grow slowly while others develop very rapidly.
Neuroendocrine tumors are characterised by abundant production of somatostatin receptor 2, a naturally circulating hormone that is an important target for scientists studying new treatment approaches.
Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT) is the most commonly used treatment for refractive ...
Home delivery of HIV medicines in South Africa significantly increased viral suppression compared to those who received clinical care, according to a study by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
The study, conducted with Amazon.com guidance during COVID-19 restrictions in South Africa, showed that among study participants, paying a fee for home delivery and monitoring of antiretroviral therapy (ART) was highly acceptable in the context of low income and high unemployment, and improved health outcomes as a result.
The researching findings were ...
Researchers at the Buck Institute analyzed data from the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker app used by 3 million people in the United Kingdom, adding the use of immunosuppressant medication, use of a mobility aid, shortness of breath, fever, and fatigue to the list of symptoms and comorbidities that increase the risk for severe COVID-19. Results are published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
"Even though there are established risk factors for severe COVID-19 there are no good predictors that enable healthcare providers, or even those who have tested positive, to assess who should seek advanced medical care," says Buck Institute ...
TAMPA, Fla. (March 8, 2021) -- Preterm birth is a END ...
Recently, Prof. CHEN Gao from Institute of Geometry and Physics of the University of Science and Technology of China has made breakthrough in the field of complex differential geometry. Using mathematical invention, he buildt a new bridge between the relativity of Einstein and quantum mechanics. This work was published in Inventiones Mathematicae.
In the field of complex differential geometry, there are two crucial physical equations: the Hermitian-Yang-Mills equation, which became the standard model of quantum mechanics, and the Kähler-Einstein equation, which is closely related to relativity. To stably solve these two equations ...
A team of researchers led by Professor Yaakov Nahmias, director of the Grass Center for Bioengineering at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and founder of Tissue Dynamic, introduced a new technological approach that has the potential to rapidly develop new drugs without the need for animal experiments.
According to Professor Nahmias, "Drug development is a long and expensive endeavor that is defined by multiple failures. The main reason for this failure is that clinical experiments are ultimately based on minimal information gained from animal experiment which often fail to replicate the human response."
The primary animals used in drug development ...
For decades, there has been a trend in microelectronics towards ever smaller and more compact transistors. 2D materials such as graphene are seen as a beacon of hope here: they are the thinnest material layers that can possibly exist, consisting of only one or a few atomic layers. Nevertheless, they can conduct electrical currents - conventional silicon technology, on the other hand, no longer works properly if the layers become too thin.
However, such materials are not used in a vacuum; they have to be combined with suitable insulators - in order to seal them off from unwanted environmental influences, and ...
Prosody is a branch of linguistics that analyses and formally represents the elements of oral expression such as pitch, tones and intonation. A study published in Cognition on 5 February shows that there are universal prosodic cues that help with learning in humans and in animals.
This study, published by Juan Manuel Toro, ICREA research professor and Paola Crespo-Bojorque, researchers of the Center for Brain and Cognition (CBC) of the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), is part of the research into language evolution that is being conducted thanks to a European Research Council Starting Grant.
Some of the mechanisms we humans use to learn language are based on general principles ...
Long life is common among bird parents that get help with childcare. This finding comes from researchers at the universities of Lund and Oxford who reviewed data from more than 9,000 studies.
Being a parent can be tough. In general, animals that care for many offspring die young, at least in species where parents are not helped by others. However, in some species things are different and parents recruit 'helpers' to assist with childcare. In such group-living species, parents often produce lots of young and also live an exceptionally long time. This new research ...
