Chronic Health Problems in Children Climb
February 24, 2010
Natural News
By S.L. Baker
Researchers from Mass General Hospital for Children in Boston gathered data about US children with health problems. They looked at conditions that limited activities and/or schooling, required medication and/or specialized equipment and health services, and that lasted for at least a year. The results of this study, just published in the February issue of JAMA (the Journal of the American Medical Association), show an alarming trend. Chronic health conditions in American kids have increased dramatically in recent years — rising from 12.8 percent in 1994 to 26.6 percent in 2006.
Over the six year study period, Jeanne Van Cleave, M.D., and her research team estimated changes in prevalence, incidence, and rates of remission in four categories: obesity (defined as a body mass index at or above the 95th percentile for age), asthma, learning or behavior problems, and other physical conditions such as diabetes and heart conditions. They compiled data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child Cohort, specifically looking at three groups of children who were between the ages of two through eight at the beginning of each study period. These groups were followed for three periods of six years each — from 1988 to 1994, 1994 to 2000 and 2000 to 2006.
The results showed that the prevalence of chronic conditions, including obesity, increased with each subsequent group. Male, Hispanic, and black youth were found to be at the highest risk. Bottom line: as the years pass, more and more American kids appear to have chronic health problems when compared to similar youngsters in previous years.
There seems little doubt that the increasing rate of obesity among children and teens, most likely fueled by junk food and lack of exercise, is one important explanation for the increase in children’s health problems. But in an editorial accompanying the JAMA study, Neal Halfon, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California at Los Angeles, and Paul W. Newacheck, Dr.P.H., of the University of California at San Francisco, pointed out that other factors must be at work, too.
“The obesity epidemic seemed to develop at a time when many indicators suggested that children’s health was generally improving. The data presented by Van Cleave et al suggest that the prevalence of other chronic health conditions is also increasing among U.S. children and that obesity is not the only clinical time bomb ticking away in children. There is an urgent need to better understand why this is the case and what can be done about it,” they stated. “Addressing the increasing incidence and prevalence of chronic conditions in children will ultimately require major reforms in the child health system. The child health system needs to do a better job preventing childhood chronic illness. The possibilities for such changes are substantial, as are the implications of not acting.”
NaturalNews has previously covered a host of environmental contaminants and toxins that could well be contributing to an increase in children’s health problems. For example the chemical bisphenol A (BPA) is used in many hard plastics and can leach from toys and baby bottles. Widely found in the environment, BPA has been linked to health problems in fetuses, babies and children, including attention deficit disorder and neurological symptoms.
Click here for the full report.
Vioxx Problems Known Years Before Recall
November 23, 2009
New York Times
by Natasha Singer
What could be done to prevent another Vioxx? This pain medication for arthritis became a blockbuster after its introduction in 1999, only to be taken off the market in 2004 when a study linked the drug to an increased risk of heart attack and strokes.
A new study published Monday in Archives of Internal Medicine offers an ambitious proposal to determine a drug’s risks sooner than they might otherwise become evident. The authors propose a system to examine widely prescribed drugs through safety analyses that would pool data as they emerge from various clinical trials of a medication and aggregate the information for a fuller picture of a drug’s harms and benefits.
As policy makers in Washington push for various forms of evidence gathering to determine the safety and effectiveness of medical treatments, the study proposes a broad model for monitoring drug safety that would consist of detailed publicly available data that independent researchers could freely analyze.
Such a database could be continually updated and aggregated with new information, as the results of new studies were published, to calculate a near real-time balance sheet of a drug’s risks and benefits.
Dr. Joseph S. Ross, the lead author of the study, said the objective of the researchers was to determine whether this kind of sequential cumulative analysis could serve as a new model for monitoring the safety of drugs after they enter the market.
“How could we be doing post-market surveillance in a better way?” said Dr. Ross, an assistant professor of geriatrics and palliative medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in Manhattan. “For drugs that we are concerned about, that are high risk, this could be a blueprint going forward.”
Drug makers and researchers regularly conduct studies called meta-analyses in which they aggregate results from some previous studies of a drug, using the combined information to summarize the benefits and risks of a treatment. But the new study proposes a continuously updated model. Using data from Vioxx as their example, the researchers reported that Merck, the drug’s maker, could have known about the increased cardiovascular risk several years earlier if the company had used the methodology.
The cumulative analysis of the researchers showed that by May 2002 — more than two years before Merck pulled Vioxx off the market — study patients on the drug had a 39 percent increased risk of heart attack or death compared with people taking a placebo.
Dr. Ross and his co-authors have each worked as paid consultants to plaintiffs involved in lawsuits against Merck over Vioxx injury claims. The researchers used documents obtained through the litigation, including detailed data from Merck’s Vioxx studies, to conduct their analysis.
In a statement Monday, Merck questioned the methodology of the authors, saying that the researchers had used categories that were too broad. The researchers, for example, counted heart attacks and deaths that happened after patients had stopped taking Vioxx.
In 2000, a study financed by Merck had reported an increased cardiovascular risk in patients taking Vioxx compared to those taking a pain medication called naproxen. The Food and Drug Administration then asked Merck to add a warning to the drug’s label.
But Merck said that the company had conducted its own regularly updated analyses of clinical trial data on Vioxx and had not determined there was a problem until 2004.
Students Have Allergic Reaction to H1N1 Vaccine
November 06, 2009
Wcbi
By Joey Barnes
According to The Mississippi State Department of Health two students at Caledonia High had an allergic reaction after receiving the H1N1 vaccination.
Six others developed shortness of breath but not the classic allergic reaction symptoms. All were taken to Baptist Golden Triangle and have been released.
“It’s just an unfortunate situation that we made an attempt to provide a service to benefit children, and sometimes with the best laid plans you have problems and there was an issue today,” says Lowndes County Schools Superintendent Mike Halford.
“When you’ve got a bunch of kids and they’re all together getting shots and getting nervous about seeing the one in front of them get a shot, and then somebody starts saying I feel bad and they start thinking, well I feel bad too,” says Mississippi State Department of Health District 4 (interim) & 6 Health Officer Dr. Rebecca James.
Hundreds of vaccinations came from the same batch that were given to Columbus and Lowndes County students and the Department of Health doesn’t believe it is a bad batch of vaccinations.
“With three cases of hives out of 10,000 doses given is a very mild reaction rate,” says James.
Vaccinations were suspended at Caledonia but continued at New Hope. Columbus Schools didn’t report any health problems with any students.
Kids Need Vitamin D
October 26, 2009
SFGate
By Associated Press
At least 1 in 5 U.S. children ages 1 to 11 doesn’t get enough vitamin D and could be at risk for a variety of health problems including weak bones, the most recent national analysis suggests.
By a looser measure, almost 90 percent of black children that age and 80 percent of Latino kids could be vitamin D deficient – “astounding numbers” that should serve as a call to action, said Dr. Jonathan Mansbach, lead author of the new analysis and a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital in Boston.
The deficiency is a concern because recent studies suggest the vitamin might help prevent infections, diabetes and some cancers.
The new analysis, released online today by the journal Pediatrics, is the first assessment of varying vitamin D levels in children ages 1 through 11. The study used data from a 2001-06 government health survey of almost 3,000 children who had blood tests measuring vitamin D.
Click here for the full report.
You’ve actually saved my life…
September 4, 2009 by Brandy
Filed under Testimonials
KT,
I don’t know if you saw the movie “Pay it Forward”, but your actions suggest you have.
I’m referring to your ability to help others in need such as I. Because of your radio show and books, I see more of how the world really is now and a possible outcome if the masses in “The Matrix” don’t.
You’ve actually saved my life by helping me to understand nutrition, specifically why I was vitamin D deficient. The reason being I have mercury fillings leaching vitamin D causing me a few health problems. Currently as long as I keep my Vitamin D levels high, I’m not going to the Convention Doctor. I’ve started to remove the filling but since I have 6 more teeth with fillings this will take me some more money and time to correct. Dr. Marshall’s Quantum Nutrition is “Nutrition that really works”.
I will continue to listen with great anticipation and look forward to your next radio broadcast.
I will Pay it (your kindness) Forward.
Keep up the great work.
Sincerely,
Dave Newman
Buffalo, New York
Hospital-Acquired Superbug Infections Soar in Newborn Babies
July 10, 2009
Natural News
by Sherry Baker
It’s scary enough to have a newborn baby in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because he or she is premature or has health problems. But now there’s reason to worry that many NICUs, places that are supposed to be dedicated to healing and protecting the youngest and most fragile of babies, are actually dangerous environments for neonates. According to a new study just published in The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, superbug infections — specifically antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections — in US NICUs increased over 300 percent in less than ten years.
Researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) used a national database on hospital-acquired infections and analyzed data voluntarily reported by NICUs between the years of 1995 and 2004. In all, the study involved information collected on nearly 5.9 million patient-days in 149 NICUs across the country.
In newborns, infections that occur during the first three days of life are most often acquired during labor and delivery. On the other hand, late-onset infections, defined as infections that developed more than three days after a child was born, are known to be primarily transmitted by parents, doctors, nurses and other health care personnel. The investigators focused on late-onset infections and found that out of about 4,400 Staph infections with antibiotic resistance, 23 percent were found to be the result of a MRSA superbug.
From 1995 to 2004, the rate of late-onset MRSA infections soared from less than one for every 10,000 hospital days to three infections per 10,000 hospital days — an enormous increase of 308 percent. The types of MRSA infections were not found to change during the years studied. About 30 percent involved bloodstream infections. Other frequent kinds of MRSA infections that were identified included pneumonia and eye infections (conjunctivitis).
For some reason, the steepest rise in MRSA infections occurred after 2002. While the tiniest babies with extremely low birth weights of 1,000 grams (about 35 ounces) had the sharpest increase in MRSA infections, the superbug infection rate actually rose in all birth weight groups.
The ever increasing rate of superbugs has become a worldwide public health problem, with Staph bacteria developing resistance to commonly used antibiotics. MRSA infections have increasingly been found within communities and not just in hospitals. However, in the new study the Staph strains found in NICUs were clearly in the class of superbugs responsible for hospital-acquired infections, not those which have been reported in the non-medical community setting.
So what’s the bottom line result of the study? According to researchers Dr. Fernanda C. Lessa and colleagues at the CDC there is clearly a need for healthcare workers to follow routine infection control steps that are already well-known to be effective in preventing the spreading of MRSA infections. They aren’t high tech chemicals or vaccines, either. Instead, the most important is simple hand washing.
As reported earlier in Natural News, one approach to fighting superbugs in hospitals has already backfired. A study showed that instead of killing potentially dangerous infections, disinfectant wipes may actually spread drug-resistant and sometimes deadly bacteria.
Click here for the full report and links from NaturalNews.com
The Kevin Trudeau Show: 06-24-09
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