Anna Nguyen, Healthy Kids blog Editor
Our pets may not be as harmless as they look. Just this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported salmonella infection outbreaks related to pet hedgehogs, turtles, and small water frogs this year. Children accounted for many of the cases in each of these outbreaks. Infants, the elderly and those with weakened immune systems are more vulnerable to becoming severely sick from salmonella.
In January, the CDC reported 20 hedgehog-related infections, including one linked to a death. Officials noted an increase in such cases since 2011. Forty-five percent of the cases were in kids 10 years of age or younger. The CDC then reported last month a total of 347 turtle-related illnesses from the past several years in 37 states and the District of Columbia.
Most recently, small water frogs marketed and sold as pets were linked to an outbreak of salmonella infections from 2008 to 2011, according to a CDC report .The infection sickened 376 people in 44 U.S. states and sent 29 percent of those infected - mostly children - to the hospital.
Anna Nguyen, Healthy Kids blog Editor
Despite the recommendation from experts, parents are increasing citing safety concerns as their reason to not vaccinate their teenage daughters against HPV, the virus that causes the most cases of cervical cancer, according to a recent study.
The study in the April issue of Pediatrics looked at vaccination rates among teens in the United States for several illnesses, including genital human papillomavirus. HPV, the most common sexually transmitted virus in the U.S., has been linked to cervical cancer, genital (anus, vagina, penis) cancers, and a type of head and neck cancer.
Researchers found a dramatic increase in the number of parents citing "Safety concerns/side effects" as their main reason for not vaccinating their daughters between 2008 and 2010. It jumped from 4.5 percent in 2008 to 16.4 percent in 2010.
Today's guest blogger David M. Pollack, M.D., is a pediatrician practicing at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Care Network. He sees patients at CHOP Primary Care offices in Broomall, Drexel Hill and Media.
Simply labeling an otherwise healthy infant as having a “disease” made parents more interested in giving their child medication, even when they were told drugs might be ineffective, according to a study in the May 2013 issue of Pediatrics published online today.
In the study, the authors concluded that disease labels, such as GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease), and information about a medication’s relative effectiveness may strongly influence parents’ interest in using one. There is a growing concern that GERD is over-diagnosed and over-treated in infants, and the authors suggest that physicians can reduce interest in medications by not labeling the symptoms as GERD, but rather by explaining to parents that acid reflux medications may often not be as effective as promised.
Gary A. Emmett, M.D., Pediatrics Professor- Thomas Jefferson Univ. & Director, Hospital Pediatrics- TJU Hospital
Prescribing drugs solely to boost thinking and memory functions in children and adolescents who do not have neurologic disorders should never occur. Practitioners should not let parents or patients bully them into prescribing stimulants and other psychoactive substances to improve academic performance, according to the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in a paper earlier this month.
“Doctors caring for children and teens have a professional obligation to always protect the best interests of the child, to protect vulnerable populations, and prevent the misuse of medication,” said author William Graf, MD, of Yale University in New Haven, Conn. in a press release. “The practice of prescribing these drugs, called neuroenhancements, for healthy students is not justifiable.”
Beth Wallace, Registered dietitian, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
If you’re like me and your iPhone (or Android) is rarely outside of arm’s reach, you should keep reading.
Nutrition apps have exploded onto the digital scene over the last few years. From calorie counting to countless recipes, there are hundreds of options that promise to make your quest for health easier. Now that so much nutrition information is literally at your fingertips, I decided to navigate the iWorld and find the apps that will make feeding your family easier.
1. Fooducate - Diet Tracker & Healthy Food Nutrition Scanner
Gary A. Emmett, M.D., Pediatrics Professor- Thomas Jefferson Univ. & Director, Hospital Pediatrics- TJU Hospital
When should an infant get solid food? For over 20 years, we have been saying after four months. Last year, the American Academy of Pediatrics changed that to a recommendation that an infant should get nothing but breast milk for the first six months of life, or infant formula if breast milk is not available.
A new survey of over 1,300 mothers showed that 40 percent fed the baby solid food before four months and almost 10 percent before four weeks, according to researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the April issue of Pediatrics, released online today.
Why are pediatricians worried about early feeding? Babies that are fed too early are more likely to be obese when they get older - that is proven. Doctors also worry that children fed early develop abnormal bowel flora (the germs in our gut that help us digest our food and prevent diseases such as celiac and inflammatory bowel diseases) and are more likely to get severe self-allergy diseases such as eczema and asthma. The evidence for these is not as strong as for obesity, but is a very strong suspicion.
Beth Wallace, Registered dietitian, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
It’s springtime! If your family celebrates Easter, you may end up with a basket of candy as big as a Halloween pumpkin. If you want to avoid the sugar rush this year, there is still plenty of time to make a healthy Easter basket swap. Melanie Savoca, a registered dietitian at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and mother of a two-year-old, helped me put together this list of Healthy Easter Basket alternatives:
Garden theme - What better place to "grow" special family memories than in a garden? Gardening with your kids not only provides the tangible benefits of fresh food, but also teaches kids about new foods, and offers an opportunity to work towards a common goal. A Garden-themed Easter Basket could include things like:
- Vegetable, fruit, herb seed packets
- Flat stones that kids can paint or decorate to label each plant in the garden
- Kid-sized garden gloves & sun hat
- Small watering can and kid-sized garden tools
Artist Basket- Do you have a budding Picasso in your house? Use this opportunity to refresh their art supplies and they will have the items long after a sugar high would last:
- Water color paints
- Stickers
- Coloring books
- Washable markers
- Mini easels or inexpensive frames to display their work
Beth Wallace, Registered dietitian, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
How do you make spinach, a superfood, more super? Pair it with a food high in vitamin C like an orange, berries, or peppers to make its nutrients easier for your body to absorb.
March is National Nutrition Month so all month long CHOP's trusted dietician Beth Wallace will be sharing her top tips for healthy eating. Follow Beth on twitter for more tips @BethWallaceRD.
Rima Himelstein, M.D., Crozer-Keystone Health System
Name the sport and it likely has a famous athlete who’s used performance enhancement drugs to win big. Now, with the recent headlines involving Lance Armstrong and doping, it’s the perfect opportunity to talk to our kids about what’s right and what’s wrong. Win or no win.
Doping is when athletes use prohibited substances or methods to unfairly improve their athletic performance. There are over 100 drugs banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Some of these drugs have enticed our young high school athletes.
Azithromycin, a commonly prescribed antibiotic, could potentially cause a fatal irregular heart rhythm in some patients, the Food and Drug Administration warned last week.
This warning will now be reflected on the drug’s label which is known as Zithromax, Zmax or as a "Z-Pack." The drug manufacturers producing the product (primarily Pfizer) also agreed with the FDA’s recommendation.
It was first reported about a year ago that azithromycin, and some other antibiotics, but not penicillins such as amoxicillin, increased the rate of cardiovascular death, and actually increased the rate of death from all causes after this antibiotic was used in adults. The rate was not insignificant being 47 additional deaths per million doses used (about 1 in every 25,000 doses), according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine in May 2012. The FDA warning also includes children, although children were not included in the original report.
