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New technique can help dyslexic kids read
better
Specialized training can reorganize the brains of dyslexic children and
help them read better, researchers report.
"The idea is to really understand nature-nurture interaction; how the
brain influences learning, but also how instruction influences the
brain," says Virginia Berninger, a professor of educational psychology
at the University of Washington's Center on Human Development and
Disability.
Berninger is one of three dyslexia experts from the University of
Washington scheduled to present their findings Feb. 13 at the annual
meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in
Seattle.
Dyslexia is the term used to describe people who have difficulty
spelling, writing and reading. Dyslexia is a so-called "neuro-behavioral"
disorder that is genetically based. It's not a disease, Berninger says,
adding that dyslexics are often gifted and creative.
Approximately 2 million U.S. school children are dyslexic, according to
the Educational Resources Information Center.
Berninger says reading is a complex activity involving different parts
of the brain. Each word has three "forms" — how it sounds, how it's
spelled and what it means. And each of these forms is processed in a
different part of the brain, she says.
Berninger developed methods to teach each of these word forms to
elementary school children with dyslexia. The hypothesis is that you
have to train for all three forms of the word to help teach a child to
read.
Educators debate whether it's more effective to teach reading using
phonics, or by emphasizing meaning, Berninger says. However, she found
the brain is sensitive to the interrelationship between both sound and
meaning.
Dyslexic children could learn to read when instruction made them aware
of word forms and their interrelationship, Berninger says.
Before the instruction, tests showed measurable differences in brain
activity between children with dyslexia and those without the disorder,
the Washington researchers say.
"We did MRI scans on 10 dyslexic and 11 non-dyslexic children," says
co-researcher Elizabeth Aylward, a professor of radiology at the Center
on Human Development and Disability. The children were in the fourth,
fifth and sixth grades.
Aylward says there were differences in the activation of specific brain
regions between the two groups of children when they were asked to
perform a specific word task during the MRI.
After three weeks of specialized training, however, the dyslexic
children showed brain activation patterns similar to the normal children
during a second MRI. They also improved on reading tests, Aylward says.
"This shows that what the brain is looking for is to create
interrelationships between sound and meaning," Berninger says.
"This also shows that you can get kids to improve their reading using
the same brain pathways as normal readers," Aylward adds. "Even though
dyslexia is a genetically based disorder, there is still enough
plasticity in the brain that it can be jump-started."
Says Berninger: "I haven't cured them, but I have shown that they are
teachable. These kids are ready to learn when they go back to school,
but unfortunately the instructional practices aren't in place in the
schools to support this jump-start."
Another member of the Washington team, Dr. Wendy Raskind, a professor of
medicine, is looking for genes that contribute to dyslexia. She is
studying 111 families who have at least one dyslexic child.
"It is unlikely that dyslexia is a single defect," Raskind says. She
believes that different genes are responsible for the various aspects of
processing written words, including sound, spelling and meaning.
Knowing which genes are involved may lead to better ways to identify
children who are likely to be dyslexic and better approaches to
treatment, Raskind says. "It may turn out that you can devise something
that trains the brain when children are 2 months old," she adds.
Elena Grigorenko, an associate professor of psychology at the Child
Study Center at Yale University, says the new research "proves again
that dyslexia is biologically rooted."
Grigorenko notes that dyslexia is really several different problems.
Some children cannot process information properly or fast enough while
others seem to have weak memories.
Each type requires different remediation strategies. "There is no one
recipe that works for everybody," she says.
More information
For more on dyslexia, check with the International Dyslexia Association
(www.interdys.org) and the
Dyslexia Research Institute (www.dyslexia-add.org).
By Steven Reinberg
Source
Shock smoking report reveals new child health
danger
Smoking has a damaging effect on almost all aspects of sexual,
reproductive and child health, doctors warned today.
A report by the British Medical Association’s Board of Science and
Tobacco Control Resource Centre details some shocking statistics about
the impact of smoking on factors other than the well-known cancer risk.
The study – Smoking and Reproductive Life – estimates about 120,000 men
aged between 30 and 50 are impotent because of smoking.
The researchers said smoking and passive smoking were linked to about
3,000 and 5,000 miscarriages a year.
They estimated that the chances of a woman smoker becoming pregnant were
reduced by up to 40% per cycle.
And for couples who are forced to seek expensive fertility treatments,
smoking could mean they have to wait much longer for success.
Smoking was also implicated in around 1,200 cases of cervical cancer
every year, the report added.
Dr Vivienne Nathanson, the BMA’s head of science and ethics, said the
sheer scale of damage to reproductive and child health caused by smoking
was “shocking”.
“Women are generally aware that they should not smoke while pregnant but
the message needs to be far stronger.
“Men and women who think they might want children one day should bin
cigarettes.” She added: “And we’re not just talking about having
children. “Women who want to protect themselves from cervical cancer
should give up smoking. “Men who want to continue to enjoy sex should
forget about lighting up, given the strong evidence that smoking is a
major cause of male sexual impotence.”
The effects of smoking on children were also highlighted in the report.
Women who smoke during pregnancy are three times more likely to have a
low birth-weight baby, which can lead to illness and death in infancy.
Smoking also increases the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth and death of
the newborn baby.
Each year more than 17,000 children under five are admitted to UK
hospitals because of breathing problems caused by exposure to other
people’s smoke.
The report also points to new evidence showing that smoking may increase
the risk of foetal malformations such as cleft lip and palate.
Smoking affects breastfeeding, making women produce less milk and of
poorer quality.
The 70-page report makes a number of recommendations, including calls
for pictorial health warnings on tobacco which reflect the risks to
reproductive life.
It says that women workers who cannot be ensured protection against
passive smoking should be entitled to leave of absence on full pay for
their whole pregnancy.
The BMA called on the media not to glamorise smoking and said that
Government targets to reduce smoking rates should be more ambitious.
And they renewed their calls for a ban on smoking in enclosed public
spaces.
BMA chairman James Johnson said: “We need more action to tackle the
devastation that smoking wreaks on families — especially in our most
disadvantaged communities.
“Health inequalities are a key government concern, yet they continue to
pursue a softly, softly approach to smoking in public places.
“They must act on the evidence and introduce legislation to make all
enclosed public places smoke-free.”
Dr Sinead Jones, director of the BMA’s Tobacco Control Resource Centre,
added: “Smoking has a profound impact on every aspect of reproductive
life, from puberty through middle-age and beyond.
“It affects not just our health, but the health of those dearest to us.
“And, sadly, its lethal legacy reaches beyond this generation, into the
next.”
Source
Why crackdown on child obesity is vital
A far-reaching national strategy
is needed to tackle the “terrifying health consequences” of the UK’s
obesity timebomb, leading doctors said today.
Today’s joint report by the Royal College of Physicians, the Faculty of
Public Health and the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said
obesity among children aged two to four almost doubled between 1989 and
1998, from 5% to 9%.
Among those aged six to 15, rates of obesity trebled from 5% in 1990 to
16% in 2001.
The report warned that conservative estimates showed that if these
trends continued, one-third of adults – a fifth of boys and a third of
girls – would be obese by 2020.
Obesity is said to be responsible for at least 30,000 deaths a year in
the UK, causing problems such as heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
The National Audit Office estimates that weight problems cost the NHS at
least £500 million a year, and the wider economy £2 billion.
Last month the Government launched a £2 million drive to tackle the
epidemic of obesity among children in England, with pilot projects
including a crackdown on unhealthy vending machines in schools.
Nearly one million four to six-year-olds are now receiving a free piece
of fruit each school day under the National School Fruit Scheme.
Children spent £433 million on sweets, crisps and fizzy drinks on their
journeys to and from school in 2002, according to the Sodexho School
Meals and Lifestyle Survey. This was up from £365 million in 2000.
The International Obesity Task Force warned in December that more than
40% of the UK population could be obese “within a generation”.
In 2001, 23% of women and 21% of men were obese, compared to 8% of women
and 6% of men in 1980.
A report commissioned by the Food Standards Agency and published last
September concluded that advertising strongly influences what youngsters
say they prefer to eat.
The study found food adverts aimed at children are dominated by what it
called the “big four” – breakfast cereals containing sugar, soft drinks,
sweets, and other snacks.
Source
Hangovers don't deter booze-loving teens
By Charlene Laino HealthDay Reporter — Ever wonder why some teens fail
to get the message that drinking can be bad for their health? Maybe it's
because their hangovers are tame when compared to an adult's throbbing
head, a new study suggests.
Using rats as test subjects, researchers found adolescent rodents have
milder hangovers, experience less anxiety and recover more quickly from
overindulgence than adult rodents do.
The findings offer new insights into the hazards of drinking among human
teenagers, including the heightened risk of alcohol abuse in adulthood,
the researchers say.
"In adult rats, all types of social behavior are suspended during the
hangover phase, which means they are experiencing increased anxiety,"
says study co-author Elena I. Varlinskaya, an associate research
professor of psychology at Binghamton University-State University of New
York. These adverse effects can act as a deterrent to further alcohol
consumption, she adds.
In contrast, adolescent rats not only show very little decrease in
social interaction after a high dose of alcohol, but the effect is
short-lived. The recovering rodents soon go on to engage in a form of
social activity that psychologists call play fighting — "a sign they are
having a good time," Varlinskaya says.
"This very unusual hangover, marked by an increase in social
interaction, keeps them drinking," she says.
Douglas B. Matthews, an associate professor of psychology at the
University of Memphis, agrees with the finding. "The study helps answer
the question of why [human] adolescents don't equate a night of heavy
drinking with negative consequences — they don't feel so bad."
The lack of adverse effects can foster a sense of invulnerability that
encourages adolescents to drink more and more frequently, he says.
This, in turn, may help to explain why teenagers who drink are at
heightened risk of alcohol-related problems in adulthood, says Matthews,
whose own research has shown that adolescent rodents that become
inebriated suffer memory loss later in life.
According to a recent federal report, the average American adult gets
drunk 7.5 times a year. Men are responsible for an estimated 81 percent
of drunken binges, defined as when a man has at least five drinks or a
woman has four or more drinks in one sitting.
Binge drinking is the number one public health problem among college
students, says Henry Wechsler, director of the Harvard School of Public
Health College Alcohol Studies Program. Nationally, 44 percent of
college students are binge drinkers, as are about 30 percent of high
school seniors, he says.
Researchers trying to better understand the effects of binge drinking on
human adolescents note the study of alcohol use in teens is peppered
with ethical and practical obstacles.
"You can't take someone under 21 years old and give them a high dose of
alcohol for obvious health concerns," Matthews says. And while
researchers could perform what they call "field studies" — testing teens
after a bout of heavy drinking during spring break, for example — "then
you have no control over the experience; you wouldn't know what other
drugs they had taken," he explains.
As a result, researchers have turned to rodents. In the new study,
researchers injected either saline or a high dose of alcohol into the
bloodstreams of male and female adult and adolescent rats. "It was a
huge dose — equivalent to the amount that would make virtually any human
pass out," Varlinskaya says.
The researchers then tested the animals a few hours later, after all the
alcohol had cleared their systems. As expected, adult rodents injected
with alcohol interacted less with their partners than saline-exposed
adult rats, Varlinskaya says. In contrast, adolescent rats exposed to
alcohol not only showed very little change in social behavior, but also
recovered more quickly than their adult counterparts. The findings
appear in the January issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental
Research.
Varlinskaya notes that previous studies have shown that when they are
drinking, adolescent rats are more socially active and can handle a lot
more alcohol than adult rats. "Now we see that they are also more social
during recovery. This can create a vicious cycle of persistent
drinking," she says. Making matters worse, Varlinskaya says, studies
have shown the chronic use of alcohol places human teens at higher risk
for alcohol addiction than adults. "It takes about seven months of
regular drinking for a teenager to show signs of dependency, compared
with three years for adults," she says.
Taken together, the research suggests that drinking during adolescence
produces brain changes that predispose a teen to alcohol abuse in
adulthood, Matthews says. The key to solving the problem, he says, is
education.
"If more kids knew what they were doing to their brains, we would see a
drop in alcohol use among adolescents," he says.
Source
Black youths likelier to quit smoking study
(HealthDayNews) Most black teens try smoking cigarettes, but they're
much less likely than whites and Hispanics to become regular smokers as
adolescents and young adults, new research finds.
The Rand Corp. study, published in the February issue of the American
Journal of Public Health, found 62 percent of black youths had lit up by
age 13, compared with 69 percent of Hispanics, 52 percent of whites and
36 percent of Asian-Americans.
But by age 15, just 7 percent of blacks in the study had become regular
smokers, compared with 20 percent of whites and Hispanics and 8 percent
of Asian-Americans.
Rand researchers attribute the drop-off in smoking among blacks to
factors including parental disapproval, communication with parents about
personal problems, having fewer friends who smoke, and receiving fewer
offers of cigarettes from peers.
"What we find really intriguing is that this parental disapproval of
smoking really seems to have an impact that African-American kids really
pay attention to," says study author Phyllis L. Ellickson.
Ellickson, director of the Rand Center for Research on Maternal, Child
and Adolescent Health, says the results suggest steps such as getting
parents to talk to their children about smoking, improving family bonds
and dampening peer pressure to smoke might help keep youths from
becoming regular smokers.
For the study, researchers tracked more than 6,000 blacks, whites,
Hispanics and Asian-Americans for 10 years, from ages 13 to 23. Rand
recruited the study participants from 30 California and Oregon middle
schools for a study on substance abuse.
Students completed surveys about substance abuse, smoking and
psychological, social and behavioral factors.
By age 23, the survey showed, 19 percent of blacks smoked regularly,
compared with 32 percent of whites, 29 percent of Hispanics and 16
percent of Asian-Americans.
Along with influence of peers and parents, researchers looked at risk
factors that could be related to decisions on whether to smoke, such as
school grades and "problem behavior" such as rebelliousness and
marijuana or alcohol use.
Asian-Americans did well in school and were less likely than others to
drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, or be exposed to "pro-smoking
influences," Ellickson says.
Blacks, by contrast, had significantly worse grades than whites
throughout middle school and high school. "But," Ellickson adds, "it
appears to be counteracted by positive influence from parents and less
exposure to smoking."
For example, the proportion of black youths with a best friend who
smokes dropped after age 13 or 14, the study says.
Edwin Fisher, a professor of psychology, medicine and pediatrics at
Washington University in St. Louis, says parents play a crucial role in
keeping kids from becoming smokers.
"An overlooked aspect of preventing smoking in adolescents is parental
involvement and parental wisdom in treating smoking as a health problem,
not a discipline problem," says Fisher, a spokesman for the American
Lung Association.
"So it's not a matter of simply saying, 'You don't smoke because you're
my child and it's my house.' It's a matter of explaining to young people
why smoking is so dangerous, and providing them opportunities for
showing independence in doing things their own way in healthy ways
without needing to show their independence by doing things like
smoking."
Preventing smoking during the teen years is critical. Tobacco use
typically begins by age 16, and the first smoke almost always occurs
before high school graduation, the American Lung Association says. At
least 4.5 million American adolescents smoke, and each day 6,000 U.S.
children under 18 smoke their first cigarette, the association says.
Moreover, smoking-related diseases kill about 430,700 Americans each
year.
Adolescent smoking has been linked not only to significant health
problems, but also involvement in fights, carrying weapons, engaging in
high-risk sexual behavior and using alcohol and other drugs.
Four decades after the landmark Surgeon General's Report on Smoking and
Health provided the first official U.S. recognition that smoking causes
cancer and other serious diseases, other new studies also have looked at
the demographics of those who smoke.
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a teaching affiliate of Harvard
Medical School, found that occupation is a significant factor in
determining which adults smoke. People in working-class, non-supervisory
positions, including blue-collar and service jobs, had the highest
smoking rates. The study also showed those with less education and lower
income smoked more than others.
Source
Program keeps kids away from TV
By Ed Edelson — A family-based intervention program reduced television
viewing for preschool children substantially, and it's something most
parents can do on their own, researchers report.
More accurately, it's something parents can do in cooperation with their
children, says program leader Dr. Barbara A. Dennison, since the key
element is finding things that children prefer to television.
"We weren't just negative," says Dennison, an associate professor of
clinical pediatrics at Columbia University in New York City. "We
encouraged parents and day schools to promote the things that children
would like to do."
Those things include having a parent read to them, having children set
the table for TV-free meals, making "No TV" stickers to put on
television sets, and having a weekend party to celebrate a TV-free week,
says Dennison, who works at Bassett Healthcare in Oneonta, N.Y., an
upstate Columbia teaching facility.
Mealtimes are important, she says: "It's better to have a lot of people
sitting around a table eating and talking, rather than lined up in front
of a television set."
The program included children aged 2.5 to 5.5 years old attending 16
preschool or day-care centers in the Oneonta area. Some of the children
were given seven sessions of teaching that emphasized alternatives to
television watching, while others were left on their own. Parents, whose
permission for the study was obtained in advance, kept logs of their
children's viewing hours.
At the start, children who got the lessons were watching television an
average of 11.9 hours a week, compared to 14 hours a week for those who
got no lessons. Two years later, the children in the intervention
program reduced their TV watching by an average of 3.1 hours per week,
while those left alone increased their TV time an average of one hour a
week, says a report in the February issue of the Archives of Pediatrics
and Adolescent Medicine.
It's not always easy for parents to keep children away from the
television set, Dennison acknowledges. When a tired parent comes home
from work, the temptation is to use television as a babysitter.
"The biggest challenge is to get parents to buy into it," says Theresa
J. Russo, an assistant professor of child and family studies at the
State University of New York at Oneonta.
Part of the parent recruiting effort is to inform them about the
possible ill effects on children of too much television watching, says
Russo, who prepared the study materials. Research has shown that kids
who spend many hours staring at the screen are more likely to be obese,
and that they can pick up violent behavior from many shows, even
cartoons.
The American Academy of Pediatrics has long recommended active efforts
by parents to limit children's viewing time, Russo notes.
It's not certain the reduction in television viewing will last, she
says, because "we didn't follow families long-term."
"But hopefully, if you make that lifestyle change, they won't go back to
it," Russo says.
More information
A rundown on why too much TV is bad for kids and what parents can do
about it can be found at the University of Oregon or the American
Academy of Pediatrics.
Source
U.S. FDA hears from parents who say
antidepressants can trigger suicides in kids
(Laurean Neergaard) Parents pleaded with the Food and Drug
Administration (news - web sites) on Monday to end the use of popular
adult antidepressants in children, saying the drugs can increase youths'
risk of suicide and violence.
"To die in this violent, unusual fashion without making a sound . . .
Paxil must have put her over the edge," said Sara Bostock, describing
how her daughter Cecily stabbed herself in the chest with a kitchen
knife shortly after graduating from Stanford University and two weeks
after starting the drug.
"You have an obligation today . . . from preventing this tragic story
from being repeated over and over again," said Mark Miller of Kansas
City, Mo., whose son Matt hanged himself from his bedroom closet after
taking his seventh Zoloft tablet.
But facing those anguished complaints were a handful of families who say
antidepressants changed their children's lives by alleviating serious
depression.
"My children have had tremendous improvement with their illnesses," said
Dr. Suzanne Vogel-Scieilia of the National Alliance for the Mentally
Ill, who has two sons using the drugs. "I shudder to think of their
plight if these medicines were not available."
The FDA opened hearings Monday on the emotionally charged controversy,
months after British health authorities first sounded the alarm by
saying an entire list of antidepressants were unsuitable for child use.
Here, no final answer is expected until late summer. Until then FDA has
advised doctors to use great caution if they prescribe any
antidepressants to anyone under age 18.
"The wrong answer in either direction . . . could have profound
consequences," said Dr. Russell Katz, FDA's director of neurologic
drugs, in explaining the lengthy deliberation.
Katz acknowledged divisions of opinion even within the FDA, where some
scientists believe there is a link between some antidepressants and
youth suicide behaviour and attempts.
Preliminary data from studies suggest that suicidal behaviour and
attempts, while infrequent, might be at least twice as frequent among
some antidepressant users. Britain put the risk at around 3.2 per cent
of children given the drugs, compared with 1.5 per cent of those given
dummy pills.
But problems with that data led FDA's leaders to conclude that they
can't yet answer the question.
Depression occurs in about 10 per cent of youth and can lead to suicide,
especially if untreated. Some 1,883 10- to 19-year-olds killed
themselves in the U.S. in 2001, and specialists say there are 10 to 20
attempts for every suicide. For adults, antidepressants clearly
alleviate major depression, the FDA stresses.
But medicines can work differently in children. The agency has approved
only one treatment - Prozac, the best known of a family of popular
antidepressants called SSRIs — to alleviate pediatric depression, saying
its benefits outweigh side effects.
Still, it is legal for doctors to prescribe adult medicines to children
even if the FDA has not formally approved pediatric use, and child
antidepressant prescriptions rose dramatically in the 1990s. The FDA
ordered other manufacturers to submit research on how their drugs affect
children and teenagers.
Last summer, British health authorities acted on the first of those
findings, declaring that no depressed child or teen should use the SSRI
drug Paxil, sold in Britain under the name Seroxat.
The FDA still is analysing the studies.
Source
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