Parents are role models who can teach their kids about healthy food and exercise habits in childhood to help avoid future health problems. “Children who are overweight are more likely to develop diabetes, experience feelings of isolation and struggle with self-esteem,” said Dr. Asma Khan, a pediatrician at OSF HealthCare in Rockland, Ill. Khan offered some tips for giving kids an early start on good health. First, teach them about hunger and fullness cues. It’s easy to eat because of boredom or sadness, but important to recognize when you’re hungry or full. “Starting healthy habits early is the best way to maintain a healthy weight,” Khan said in an OSF news release. Use child-sized plates to make it easier to gauge how much food your child needs in a meal. Half the plate should be filled with fruits and veggies. The other half should be a lean protein, such as fish, chicken or beans, and a whole grain, which might be oatmeal, whole wheat bread or brown rice. Choose healthy snacks such as carrots and hummus, an apple or kale chips. Skip snacks that are high in sugar and fat, such as soda, juice, sports drinks, chips, cookies, candy and cupcakes, except on special occasions. “I also tell parents to limit the junk food that comes into the house. There isn’t as much temptation to…  read on >  read on >

For reasons that can’t always be explained, some women experience pain in their external genital area. Called vulvodynia, this term encompasses everything from localized pain at a specific spot, such as on the outer or inner labia, for example, to pain throughout the area. It might feel like burning, aching, rawness, swelling or just irritation, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). Although pain in this area is common, when it lasts for three months or more without an infection, skin disorder or other medical condition to explain it, that’s vulvodynia, according to ACOG. The pain can be severe or mild and it can last forever. It’s also treatable, according to a blog post from University of Texas Health Austin. “You know, women don’t often come in saying, I have pain. They say things like, ‘I have burning, irritation, pain during sex at times, pins and needles feeling,” Teresa Reed, a former physician assistant at UT Health Austin, said in the blog post. “When they come in, we rule out all those other things that can cause those conditions. By definition, vulvodynia is the absence of physical findings, it is a musculoskeletal, neuropathic condition.” What is vulvodynia? The National Vulvodynia Association (NVA) describes the condition as “chronic vulvar pain without an identifiable cause.” Although descriptions vary, most women say they have a…  read on >  read on >

It’s not always necessary to lower a child’s fever, but parents often do. A new poll from Michigan Medicine found that about one-third of parents reach for fever-reducing medicines too quickly. “Often parents worry about their child having a fever and want to do all they can to reduce their temperature. However, they may not be aware that in general the main reason to treat a fever is just to keep their child comfortable,” said Dr. Susan Woolford, co-director of the C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital National Poll on Children’s Health at University of Michigan Health, in Ann Arbor. “Some parents may immediately rush to give their kids medicine, but it’s often better to let the fever run its course,” Woolford said in a university news release. “Lowering a child’s temperature doesn’t typically help cure their illness any faster. In fact, a low-grade fever helps fight off the infection. There’s also the risk of giving too much medication when it’s not needed, which can have side effects.” The poll surveyed nearly 1,400 parents of children aged 12 and under between August and September 2022. The results showed that even though parents recognize the benefits of a low-grade fever for fighting off infection, about one-third would still give their child fever-reducing medication at temperatures below 100.4. Half would do so at a temperature between 100.4 and 101.9,…  read on >  read on >

Natural immunity acquired from a COVID infection provides strong and lasting protection against severe illness if a person becomes reinfected, a new evidence review has concluded. Ten months after a COVID infection, protection against hospitalization and death remains at 89% for Omicron and 90% for earlier variants, according to pooled data from 65 studies conducted in 19 countries. However, protection against reinfection wanes quickly with Omicron, which is the dominant COVID strain at this time, researchers found. After 10 months, a previous case of Omicron provides only 36% protection against a follow-up COVID infection, researchers reported Feb. 16 in The Lancet. The analysis suggests that the level and duration of protection derived from COVID infection is at least on a par with that provided by two doses of the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, researchers said. “These findings are not surprising as multiple studies have shown that prior infection confers protection against severe disease, though it may not confer protection against infection in the Omicron era,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. He was not involved in the research. But because people first infected with the coronavirus run the risk of hospitalization, death and long COVID, researchers concluded that vaccination remains the overall best form of protection against COVID. “The vaccines and…  read on >  read on >

Older people have vaccines available to prevent severe influenza and COVID-19, but there’s been nothing to protect against the third respiratory virus that contributed to this season’s wretched “triple-demic.” Until now. Two major pharmaceutical companies published clinical trial results this week that pave the way for an RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) vaccine to be available for adults by the time next cold and flu season rolls around. “RSV continues to be the last of the major winter respiratory viruses for which we don’t have a vaccine, but as these two articles in the New England Journal of Medicine indicate, we’re getting close,” said Dr. William Schaffner. He is medical director of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, in Bethesda, Md. The companies — GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Janssen — both have RSV vaccine candidates that can prevent severe illness in seniors, results show. The GSK vaccine provides 94% protection against severe lower respiratory tract RSV, and about 83% protection against lower respiratory tract infections overall, said Dr. Leonard Friedland, vice president and director of scientific affairs and public health for GSK U.S. Vaccines. “We’re very, very pleased and excited because this is the first time that an RSV vaccine has made it through phase 3 and has published data in a peer-reviewed journal,” Friedland said. The Janssen vaccine also provided good protection in a phase 2b…  read on >  read on >

Talk about the stuff of nightmares. You have extremely itchy skin at bedtime, not to mention a pimple-like rash. What is it? Those are fairly clear signs of scabies, a microscopic parasitic infestation where mites burrow under your skin and lay eggs there. Scabies infection comes from prolonged contact, not just a quick brush against someone else’s skin. It can also be passed through bedding or clothing. “Anyone who is diagnosed with scabies, as well as his or her sexual partners and other contacts who have had prolonged skin-to-skin contact with the infested person, should be treated,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises. What is scabies? This “human itch mite” lives and lays eggs in the upper layer of the skin, according to the CDC. About 200 million people worldwide have scabies at any one time, including up to 10% of children in poor areas, according to the World Health Organization. Once the eggs hatch, the larvae can travel to the skin’s surface, spreading to other areas or other people, according to the Mayo Clinic. What does scabies look like? It may resemble hives, tiny bites, knots under the skin or even eczema-like scaly patches, according to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD). Sores may develop from scratching. Under magnification, the mite is creamy-white, has eight legs and a round body. It…  read on >  read on >

Ramen danger: A steaming cup of instant noodles is a big cause of scald injuries in children, researchers report. A new study that examined pediatric admissions at University of Chicago Medicine for burn injuries caused by hot liquids found that nearly one-third were caused by instant noodles between 2010 and 2020. “Anecdotally, it felt like every other child we were consulted on for a burn was injured by instant noodles, so we wanted to dive into the data to see what the trend really was,” said senior author Dr. Sebastian Vrouwe, assistant professor of surgery at UChicago Medicine. “Our hope is to develop the groundwork for future burn prevention programming, as essentially all childhood burns are in some way preventable,” he said in a system news release. Researchers from the UChicago Medicine’s Burn Center reviewed 790 cases, attributing 31% to instant noodles. The research team also found that Black children and kids who lived in areas with lower Childhood Opportunity Index (COI) scores were more likely to suffer these scald burns than their peers. Broadly stated, the COI is a measure of social, economic, educational and health conditions in neighborhoods. Being unsupervised led to higher risk. About 40% of instant noodle burns occurred when kids were alone. While the study examined only data from UChicago Medicine’s Burn Center, researchers suspect the statistics speak to a…  read on >  read on >

How close a person lives to a major road could have an impact on their eczema risk. New research suggests that folks who live farther from one are less likely to develop the skin condition. A 13-year medical chart review focused on patients in Denver, from infants to age 18. Those with eczema were compared to an equal-sized control group of patients without the condition. In all, the study included more than 14,000 children. The researchers calculated the distance from their homes to a road with annual traffic of more than 10,000 vehicles a day. The risk of eczema (atopic dermatitis) dropped 21% for every 10-fold increase in distance from a major road, the study found. “In the end, we found children who lived 1,000 meters [0.6 miles] or more from a major road had 27% lower odds of atopic dermatitis compared to children who lived within 500 meters of a major road,” said lead author Dr. Michael Nevid, a fellow at National Jewish Health in Denver, who pursued this research after learning about a similar study in Asia. “This is an early association study, so more work needs to be done to examine the pathophysiological mechanisms involved in the association,” Nevid said in a news release from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. The findings were published in a February online supplement…  read on >  read on >

A highly infectious strain of avian influenza is tearing through commercial and backyard poultry flocks, causing egg prices to rise as sick chickens are culled across the United States. Now, some experts are worried that the H5N1 avian flu might become humankind’s next pandemic-causing pathogen, if the raging virus makes the leap from birds to humans. That’s because other mammals have started to pick up the avian flu, and mammal-to-mammal outbreaks of the H5N1 virus are also occurring in rare instances. “We’re always concerned when it’s in mammals, just because they’re closely related to humans,” explained Dr. Ryan Miller, an infectious disease doctor at the Cleveland Clinic, in Ohio. The red flag officially unfurled last week in a report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which noted the spread of avian flu into certain mink and seal populations, and assessed the threat of spread into humans. “During the past 20 years, fewer than 900 confirmed human cases of H5N1 have been reported to the WHO [World Health Organization],” the report stated. “The historic case-fatality rate for human H5N1 infection has been high — more than 50%. But some experts say that’s likely an overestimation because many mild or asymptomatic infections may go unreported.” “Lots of flu viruses circulate in birds but never pose major threats to humans,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior…  read on >  read on >

Children who were exposed to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medications their moms took during pregnancy are not more prone to neurodevelopmental disorders such as ADHD or autism, researchers report. The news may be welcome to women who’ve needed to take ADHD medication throughout their pregnancy. “We can see that the number of women of childbearing age who are medicated for ADHD is rapidly increasing, and therefore it is very important to garner more knowledge to be able to counsel these women,” said study co-author Dr. Veerle Bergink, director of the Women’s Mental Health Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. “We know that there is an increased risk of accidents or losing a job when women do not take ADHD medication, when it is indicated,” Bergink said in a Mount Sinai news release. “There are still unknowns, but these results may contribute to women making informed decisions about using ADHD medication during pregnancy.” Researchers at Icahn and the National Centre for Register-Based Research at Aarhus University in Denmark examined more than 1 million children born between 1998 and 2015 in Denmark and followed through 2018. The data included nearly 900 children whose mothers either continued using ADHD medication throughout pregnancy or started on ADHD medication during pregnancy. It also included 1,270 children whose mothers stopped taking ADHD medication…  read on >  read on >