(Press-News.org) An important predictor of the severity of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants may be what their mothers ate during pregnancy, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
RSV is the most common cause of severe lower respiratory tract disease among infants and young children worldwide. Currently there is no effective vaccine against RSV. Outbreaks occur in communities each year, usually lasting 4-5 months during the fall, winter and/or spring months.
Lead author Fernando Polack, M.D., Cesar Milstein Professor of Pediatrics, said his study found that the most serious cases of RSV correlate with mothers who ate a diet high in carbohydrates during pregnancy.
"These cases were not just severe, but the sickest of sick," Polack said. "What we found was the presumptive impact of a carbohydrate-rich diet was clearly dose dependent."
More than 1,200 infants younger than 2 years old were hospitalized in 12 institutions in Buenos Aires, Argentina, during the 2011 RSV season.
Of those patients, nearly 800 were found to have RSV infection, and 106 of those babies were considered to have a life-threatening form of the disease, with oxygen saturation rates below 87 percent: Twenty-two infants died in the hospital, and an additional 26 infants died at home with evidence suggesting they died from RSV.
Polack and his collaborators had the mothers fill out a nutrition survey during their final trimester of pregnancy in order to examine the impact of maternal diets heavy in fruits and vegetables versus protein, fats or carbohydrate-rich diets.
Overall, the frequency of life-threatening or fatal RSV in infants was about 12.7 percent among participants, but that rate jumped to 55.6 percent for babies whose mothers ate the greatest proportion of carbohydrates.
"Our study suggests that, where RSV and other respiratory viruses are concerned, the more sugars a mother eats the worse the situation may get for the baby in the first part of life," said Polack, adding that the next step will be to confirm the association in future studies.
###
Polack's work is part of a large study conducted on RSV in developing countries, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. END
Vanderbilt study finds maternal diet important predictor of severity for infant RSV
2013-03-04
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
Recon 2 modeling may help tailor treatments for patients with metabolic diseases, cancer
2013-03-04
An international team of researchers, including an investigator with the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech, has produced what may be the most comprehensive computer model of human metabolism yet developed.
The discovery, detailed Sunday (March 3, 2013) in the journal Nature Biotechnology, advances understanding of human metabolism in health and disease. Called Recon 2, the model builds and improves upon earlier-generation metabolic reconstruction systems and may be useful for finding biomarkers of metabolic diseases, such as glycogen storage disorder, ...
New American Chemical Society video explains why cats lack a sweet tooth
2013-03-04
Do cats purrr-ferrr sardines or sweets? The American Chemical Society (ACS), the world's largest scientific society, today released a new Bytesize Science video that explains why cats, unlike humans and other mammals, are indifferent to sweet flavors. Produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs, it is available at www.BytesizeScience.com.
The video was filmed at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, an institute dedicated to research on taste and smell. Prior to becoming Monell's Director, Gary Beauchamp, Ph.D., studied the sweet taste receptor genes of cats in the late ...
New report analyzes potential impact of sequestration on CHCs and underserved communities
2013-03-04
WASHINGTON and NEW YORK— A new report by the Geiger Gibson/RCHN Community Health Foundation Research Collaborative at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS) examines the potential impact of sequestration on community health centers and their patients and communities. "Assessing the Potential Impact of Sequestration on Community Health Centers, Patients, and Medically Underserved Communities" estimates that the nation's 1,200 federally funded health centers will lose $120 million in grant funding, and that this funding drop can ...
National commission calls for phasing out of fee-for-service pay within 5 years
2013-03-04
Washington, DC—The National Commission on Physician Payment Reform issued a report today detailing a series of sweeping recommendations aimed at reining in health spending and improving quality of care by fundamentally changing the way doctors are paid. The Commission, chaired by former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation president Steven A. Schroeder, M.D., with former Senator Majority leader Bill Frist, M.D., as Honorary Chair, calls for eliminating stand-alone fee-for-service payment by the end of the decade. The group urges a transition over five years to a blended payment ...
First evidence that obesity gene is risk factor for melanoma
2013-03-04
The research shows that people with particular variations in a stretch of DNA within the FTO gene, called intron 8, could be at greater risk of developing melanoma.
Variations in a different part of the FTO gene, called intron 1, are already known to be the most important genetic risk factor for obesity and overeating. These variants are linked to Body Mass Index (BMI) – a measure of a person's shape based on their weight and height. Having a high BMI can increase the risk of various diseases including type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, womb (endometrial) cancer and more.
But ...
Fermat's Last Theorem and more can be proved more simply
2013-03-04
Fermat's Last Theorem—the idea that a certain simple equation had no solutions— went unsolved for nearly 350 years until Oxford mathematician Andrew Wiles created a proof in 1995. Now, Case Western Reserve University's Colin McLarty has shown the theorem can be proved more simply.
The theorem is called Pierre de Fermat's last because, of his many conjectures, it was the last and longest to be unverified.
In 1630, Fermat wrote in the margin of an old Greek mathematics book that he could demonstrate that no integers (whole numbers) can make the equation xn + yn = zn ...
Don't be fooled: Flowers mislead traditional taxonomy
2013-03-04
For hundreds of years, plant taxonomists have worked to understand how species are related. Until relatively recently, their only reliable source of information about these relationships was the plants' morphology—traits that could be observed, measured, counted, categorized, and described visually. And paramount among these morphological traits were aspects of flower shape and arrangement.
In the papilionoid legumes—a large, diverse group that includes the common pea and bean—most species have highly specialized, "butterfly-shaped" flowers with bilateral symmetry, fused ...
Speech emerges in children with autism and severe language delay at greater rate than thought
2013-03-04
(Baltimore, MD) – New findings published in Pediatrics (Epub ahead of print) by the Kennedy Krieger Institute's Center for Autism and Related Disorders reveal that 70 percent of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) who have a history of severe language delay, achieved phrase or fluent speech by age eight. This suggests that more children presenting with ASD and severe language delay at age four can be expected to make notable language gains than was previously thought. Abnormalities in communication and language are a defining feature of ASD, yet prior research ...
Unhealthy drinking widespread around the world, CAMH study shows
2013-03-04
March 4, 2013 (Toronto) – A new study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) shows that alcohol is now the third leading cause of the global burden of disease and injury, despite the fact most adults worldwide abstain from drinking.
This research, part of the 2010 Global Burden of Disease study, was published in this month's issue of the journal Addiction. It also found that Canadians drink more than 50 per cent above the global average.
"Alcohol consumption has been found to cause more than 200 different diseases and injuries," said Kevin Shield, the ...
National Sleep Foundation poll finds exercise key to good sleep
2013-03-04
WASHINGTON, DC, March 4, 2013—Exercise can affect your sleep. The results of the National Sleep Foundation's 2013 Sleep in America® poll show a compelling association between exercise and better sleep.
"Exercise is great for sleep. For the millions of people who want better sleep, exercise may help," says David Cloud, CEO of the National Sleep Foundation (NSF).
Exercisers say they sleep better
Self-described exercisers report better sleep than self-described non-exercisers even though they say they sleep the same amount each night (6 hours and 51 minutes, average on ...