Genes Linked to Stuttering Identified
February 11th, 2010
ABC News
By Joseph Brownstein
When she was a girl, Jane Fraser recalls her father, Malcolm, asking her to give their name when they checked into a hotel.
Malcolm Fraser was one of the founders of the Genuine Parts Company, which is now part of NAPA Auto Parts. But this successful man was also a stutterer.
“It’s all over my family, and a lot of us stuttered as children but got therapy early on,” said Jane Fraser, noting that she received speech therapy because of the suspicion at the time that stuttering runs in families. For her, the therapy may have spared her from the condition.
“None of my generation or their children or their grandchildren have that problem,” she said.
On Wednesday, researchers confirmed what some have long suspected by finding genes that account for some cases of stuttering, a condition that affects about 3 million Americans.
It is a development that Fraser and others believe will allow better recognition of the condition and more early intervention and be the first step toward resolving an ailment that affects many worldwide.
“I think one of the most exciting things [about the finding] is that people who stutter have to spend their lives telling people it is not psychological, it is not emotional,” said Fraser, who is now president of the Stuttering Foundation of America, an organization founded by her father.
This study, she said, “takes that burden off of people of having to explain what it is.
“Every day, we hear from hundreds of parents who call us, and their first question is, ‘Did I cause my child’s stuttering?’” she said. “Knowing there is a biological base at least relieves that person of guilt.”
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1 in 110 US Children had Autism in 2006
December 21, 2009
CNN
By Miriam Falco
A new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that one in 110 children in the United States had autism in 2006.
“The average prevalence of autism among 8-year-olds increased by 57 percent,” according to Catherine Rice, lead author of the report and a behavioral health scientist at the CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities.
The research shows that boys still outnumber girls in autism prevalence. One in 70 boys were diagnosed with the disorder, compared with one in 315 girls. However, girls diagnosed with autism often have more severe symptoms.
To better understand the prevalence of autism, the CDC reviewed the records of children diagnosed with autism from physicians and schools in 11 sites across the country that are part of the Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network.
The new report tracks autism prevalence among 8-year-olds from 2006 in 11 states and compares it with data collected at 14 monitoring sites in 2002, when the prevalence of autism averaged 1 in 150 children. Ten of these sites are represented in both reports.
Geri Dawson, chief science officer for the advocacy group Autism Speaks, said this report validates early estimates of how many children are affected by autism.
“We now have firm evidence that autism spectrum disorders affect a staggering 1 percent of children, and this increase cannot be fully accounted for by broader diagnosis or earlier diagnosis.”
“Autism spectrum disorder” is an umbrella term for three types of neurological disorders that can lead to significant social, communication and behavioral challenges. According to the CDC, those are autistic disorder, or classic autism, and the two milder forms: Asperger’s syndrome and atypical autism called Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified.
“I was surprised by the increase [in prevalence],” Dr. Gary Goldstein said. Goldstein is president and CEO of the Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.
“Nine of the 10 sites had an increase; nobody had a decrease,” Goldstein added.
The Kennedy Krieger Institute provides therapies and services for children with autism and conducts research to find the causes of autism spectrum disorders. The institute also works with Autism Speaks.
Not all experts are convinced that there is a surge in autism cases. Dr. Max Wiznitzer, a pediatric neurologist at Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio, believes that some children may be given the autism label without meeting the actual case definition for the disorder.
He points to a part in the report that said 54 percent of children were confirmed as meeting the autism spectrum disorder case definition, which means almost half did not. “This suggests that overdiagnosis is occurring in the population,” Wiznitzer said.
The CDC report also found a slight improvement in when children were diagnosed with the disorder. The average age of diagnosis was 4½ years, a five-month improvement from 2002. But that’s too late, according to some experts.
“The other shocker for me is how little the age of diagnosis changed,” Goldstein said. “What didn’t change was the average age of parental concern.”
Rice says the new CDC report found that in most cases, parents had concerns before their children were 2 years old, and yet children weren’t getting the official diagnosis until more than three years later. The longer it takes for a child to get diagnosed with autism, the more the start of therapy is delayed.
“That is still too late,” Wiznitzer said. He added that he would consider a diagnosis between 4 and 5 years a “late diagnosis” in his practice. “We need to do a better job of identifying children earlier on.”
Goldstein agrees. He says that to diagnose “at 53 months [4½ years] is too late to get into early intervention. We know that we can diagnose at 24 months, and we know early intervention works.”
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Back Pain During Pregnancy Reduced With Acupuncture
November 25, 2009
Natural News
By E. Huff
The unique circulatory network that exists between the mother and her developing child is delicate, leading many prenatal health providers to shy away from prescribing any pharmacological methods of intervention to alleviate the lower back pain associated with pregnancy. Since drugs carry heavy side effects for both mother and child, researchers have continued to investigate safer, simpler, more natural methods of mitigation.
Dr. Shu-Ming Wang of the Yale School of medicine suggests that simple, inexpensive acupuncture treatments offer a drug-free method of easing common back and pelvic pain in pregnant women and may help stave off perpetual chronic back pain throughout their lives.
Three groups of women were included in the study; one group receiving real acupuncture, the second group receiving acupuncture in “sham” points, and the third group receiving nothing but self-care. Eighty-one percent of the women in the legitimate acupuncture group experienced a 30 percent or greater reduction in pain while only 59 percent in the phony acupuncture group experienced such results. Of the group receiving no treatment, 47 percent indicated reduction in pain.
After only one week, 37 percent of the women receiving genuine acupuncture treatment were pain free compared to 22 percent in the fake group and only 9 percent in the self-care control group. Those who received veritable acupuncture treatment also experienced a significant improvement in mobility and function compared to the other two groups.
Though not all women remained free of pain in the weeks following the study, researchers indicate that longer-term treatments may produce more sustained relief. Further study is also needed to verify characteristically why some women respond more favorably than others to acupuncture treatment.
Acupuncture continues to make inroads into mainstream medicine due to its veritable effects on reducing pain. Studies conducted on a wide cross-section of pain conditions have seen favorable results, leading the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine to support acupuncture as a viable treatment option.
From fibromyalgia and chronic headaches to cramps and arthritis, alternative and complementary doctors are witnessing excellent results in prescribing this inexpensive treatment option for their patients’ ailments rather than pharmaceutical drugs.
Low Self-Esteem Leads to Obesity
September 11, 2009
BBC News
Children with self-esteem problems are more likely to be obese as adults, a research team has found.
A study of 6,500 participants in the 1970 British Birth Cohort Study found that 10-year-olds with lower self esteem tended to be fatter as adults.
The affect was particularly true for girls, researchers from King’s College London reported.
One obesity expert said the results highlighted that early intervention was key to tackling obesity.
The children had their weight and height measured by a nurse at the age of 10 and they self-reported when they were 30.
Their emotional states were also noted, the researchers reported in the journal BMC Medicine.
Children with a lower self-esteem, those who felt less in control of their lives, and those who worried often were more likely to gain weight over the next 20 years, the results showed.
Professor David Collier, who led the research, said: “What’s novel about this study is that obesity has been regarded as a medical metabolic disorder – what we’ve found is that emotional problems are a risk factor for obesity.
“This is not about people with deep psychological problems, all the anxiety and low self-esteem were within the normal range.”
Strategies
Another researcher, Andrew Ternouth, said: “While we cannot say that childhood emotional problems cause obesity in later life, we can certainly say they play a role, along with factors such as parental weight, diet and exercise.
“Strategies to promote the social and emotional aspects of learning, including the promotion of self-esteem, are central to a number of recent policy initiatives.
“Our findings suggest that approaches of this kind may carry positive benefits for physical health as well as for other aspects of children’s development.”
Dr Ian Campbell, of the charity, Weight Concern, said: “This study presents some disturbing evidence that, as we suspected, childhood psychological issues have an influence on future weight gain and health.
“Many of the adults we work with have identifiable underlying emotional and self esteem issues and are often resistant to treatment.
“The message here is that early intervention, in childhood, can be the key to combating adult obesity.
“That requires much more than health practitioners can deliver alone and needs greater alertness from parents, teachers, and anyone involved in the welfare of children.”
