VIDEO: This is Fahd A. Ahmad, M.D. of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Click here for more information. BOSTON – More than 1 million youths ages 15-24 have sexually transmitted infections (STIs) caused by Chlamydia trachomatis and Neisseria gonorrhea. Many others, however, are unaware they are infected because they have not been tested. Technology can change that, according to preliminary data from a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric ...

BOSTON – Although children are more likely than adults to suffer from many diseases, few clinical trials are being conducted to test drugs in pediatric patients, according to a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Drug studies in children are important because children often respond differently to medications than adults. However, there is widespread concern about the lack of clinical evidence available to guide physicians in prescribing pharmaceuticals to children. Florence Bourgeois, MD, MPH, ...

BOSTON – Contrary to what many trauma teams believe, the presence of family members does not impede the care of injured children in the emergency department, according to a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Professional medical societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Emergency Physicians, support family presence during resuscitations and invasive procedures. The degree of family member involvement ranges from observation to participation, depending ...

BOSTON – Black children are less likely than white children to receive medication for abdominal pain in the emergency department (ED) even when they report severe pain, according to a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. "The emergency department serves as our nation's health care safety net, where all children can receive care regardless of their insurance status, ability to pay or race," said lead author Tiffani J. Johnson, MD, pediatric emergency medicine fellow at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh ...

BOSTON – While eating too much food can cause obesity, the fear of not having enough food may lead to the same result, according to a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Being worried about not having enough food to feed one's family, a situation called food insecurity, is common in low-income families. These families often are overweight, too. "Understanding the reasons why poverty puts families at greater risk of obesity is essential to addressing the epidemic," said study lead author Rachel ...

BOSTON – Many parents cringe when their child asks for help with math homework. New research shows that poor math skills can cause another difficulty for caregivers — measuring the right amount of medicine. In fact, parents with math skills at the third grade level or below were five times more likely to measure the wrong dose of medication for their child than those with skills at the sixth grade level or higher, according to a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. "Parents face many challenges ...

BOSTON – Efforts to prevent obesity among low-income infants should focus not only on what babies are being fed but also the reasons behind unhealthy feeding practices, according to a study to be presented Saturday, April 28, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Adding cereal to bottles is one unhealthy practice that is discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics because it may lead to overfeeding and excess weight gain in infants. Researchers sought to determine factors associated with putting cereal in bottles among low-income, ...

BOSTON -- Preventing chronic diseases and disorders that begin in infancy will improve the health of children and adults, according to research being presented on Saturday, April 28, 2012, at 10:30 a.m. ET in a topic symposium at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Room 302 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. The session, "Life-course Research: State of the Art and Science," will cover how proper nutrition and healthy habits in infancy, along with diminishing cumulative risks over time, will help prevent disease burden later in life. Speakers ...

Traumatic shoulder injuries that result in a patient visit to the ER often contain a secondary injury that can cause pain and discomfort in that part of the body after the primary injury has healed. By focusing on the primary injury, radiologists sometimes miss the secondary injury, which can compromise treatment effectiveness. Trainees in the Brigham and Women's Hospital Radiology Residency Program developed new protocols aimed at drawing ER radiologists' attention to the potential presence of secondary should injuries. Better identification of these injuries could lead ...

Penn State University astronomers using the world's largest radio telescope, at Arecibo, Puerto Rico, have discovered flaring radio emission from an ultra-cool star, not much warmer than the planet Jupiter, shattering the previous record for the lowest stellar temperature at which radio waves were detected. The team from Penn State's Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Center for Exoplanets and Habitable Worlds, led by Alex Wolszczan, the discoverer of the first planets ever found outside our solar system, has been using the giant 305-m (1000-ft) telescope ...

BOSTON – While it may be cute when a 3-year-old imitates his parent's bad behavior, when adolescents do so, it's no longer a laughing matter. Teens who fight may be modeling what they see adult relatives do or have parents with pro-fighting attitudes, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. "Parents and other adults in the family have a substantial influence on adolescents' engagement in fighting," said Rashmi Shetgiri, MD, FAAP, lead author of the study. "Interventions to prevent fighting, ...

BOSTON – Noisy neighbors and broken-down elevators are common downsides of apartment living. You also can add unwanted tobacco smoke to the list of hazards, according to research to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Studies have shown that tobacco smoke can seep from one apartment into another. The extent to which this happens, however, is unclear. Researchers from the American Academy of Pediatrics Julius B. Richmond Center of Excellence surveyed a nationally representative sample of adults living in ...

BOSTON – The challenges that come with battling a chronic medical condition or developmental disability are enough to get a young person down. But being left out, ignored or bullied by their peers is the main reason youths with special health care needs report symptoms of anxiety or depression, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Being bullied has been shown to increase students' risk for academic and emotional problems. Little research has been done specifically on how being a victim ...

BOSTON – Newborns whose mothers are under stress during the first trimester of pregnancy may be at risk for low iron status, which could lead to physical and mental delays down the road, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Iron plays an important role in the development of organ systems, especially the brain. Well-known risk factors for poor iron status in infants are maternal iron deficiency, maternal diabetes, smoking during pregnancy, preterm birth, low birthweight and multiple ...

BOSTON – It's well-known that using a cell phone while driving can lead to motor vehicle crashes. New research — to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston — shows that even anticipating calls or messages may distract drivers, increasing the risk of a crash. Jennifer M. Whitehill, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center at the University of Washington, and her colleagues sought to determine whether compulsive cell phone use is associated with motor vehicle crashes. They enlisted ...

BOSTON – Some people have questioned whether a ban on texting while driving will actually lead to more crashes because drivers will conceal their cell phones, making it more dangerous to read and type messages. Research led by high school students, however, shows that texting while driving is unsafe regardless of where the phone is positioned. The study, part of a project called Generation tXt, will be presented by one of the high school authors on Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. Generation tXt was designed by ...

BOSTON – When children behave badly, it's easy to blame their parents. Sometimes, however, such behavior may be due to a mental disorder. Mental illnesses are the No. 1 cause of medical disability in youths ages 15 and older in the United States and Canada, according to the World Health Organization. "One reason we haven't made greater progress helping people recover from mental disorders is that we get on the scene too late," said Thomas R. Insel, MD, director of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and the featured speaker at the American Academy of Pediatrics' ...

BOSTON – There is a long-held concern that youths who eat a lot of fast food are at risk for becoming overweight. New research to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston shows that greater familiarity with fast-food restaurant advertising on television is associated with obesity in young people. "We know that children and adolescents are highly exposed to fast-food restaurant advertising, particularly on television. This study links obesity in young people to familiarity with this advertising, suggesting that youth ...

BOSTON – Minors who were familiar with television alcohol advertisements were more likely to have tried alcoholic beverages and binge drink than those who could not recall seeing such ads, according to a study to be presented Sunday, April 29, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Boston. "Underage drinking remains an important health risk in the U.S.," said lead author Susanne E. Tanski, MD, MPH, FAAP, assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Dartmouth, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. "In this study, we ...

Scientists have predicted that ocean temperatures will rise in the equatorial Pacific by the end of the century, wreaking havoc on coral reef ecosystems. But a new study shows that climate change could cause ocean currents to operate in a surprising way and mitigate the warming near a handful of islands right on the equator. As a result these Pacific islands may become isolated refuges for corals and fish. Here's how it would happen, according to the study by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists Kristopher Karnauskas and Anne Cohen, published April 29 in the ...

Why do some teenagers start smoking or experimenting with drugs—while others don't? In the largest imaging study of the human brain ever conducted—involving 1,896 14-year-olds—scientists have discovered a number of previously unknown networks that go a long way toward an answer. Robert Whelan and Hugh Garavan of the University of Vermont, along with a large group of international colleagues, report that differences in these networks provide strong evidence that some teenagers are at higher risk for drug and alcohol experimentation—simply because their brains work differently, ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Red, green, and blue lasers have become small and cheap enough to find their way into products ranging from BluRay DVD players to fancy pens, but each color is made with different semiconductor materials and by elaborate crystal growth processes. A new prototype technology demonstrates all three of those colors coming from one material. That could open the door to making products, such as high-performance digital displays, that employ a variety of laser colors all at once. "Today in order to create a laser display with arbitrary colors, ...

A combination of two diabetes drugs, metformin and rosiglitazone, was more effective in treating youth with recent-onset type 2 diabetes than metformin alone, a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found. Adding an intensive lifestyle intervention to metformin provided no more benefit than metformin therapy alone. The study also found that metformin therapy alone was not an effective treatment for many of these youth. In fact, metformin had a much higher failure rate in study participants than has been reported in studies of adults treated with ...

It is important to be able to monitor genetically modified (GM) crops, not only in the field but also during the food processing chain. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal BMC Biotechnology shows that products from genetically modified crops can be identified at low concentration, using bioluminescent real time reporter (BART) technology and loop mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP). The combination of these techniques was able to recognise 0.1% GM contamination of maize, far below the current EU limit of 0.9%. In agriculture GM crops have ...

Alu elements infiltrated the ancestral primate genome about 65 million years ago. Once gained an Alu element is rarely lost so comparison of Alu between species can be used to map primate evolution and diversity. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Mobile DNA has found a single Alu, which appears to be an ancestral great ape Alu, that has uniquely multiplied within the orangutan genome. Analysis of DNA sequences has found over a million Alu elements within each primate genome, many of which are species specific: 5,000 are unique to humans, ...