Personal Health: News and Notes

Teenagers who admit to sexting are far more likely to also say they engage in sexual intercourse, concludes a study of 1,800 Los Angeles area youth ages 12 to 18.

The researchers, including study author Eric Rice of the University of Southern California, found that kids who sext were seven times more likely to say they also had sex. This does not mean that sexting leads to sex like a gateway drug - though it can't be ruled out.

Instead, it means that sexting and sex form parts of what researchers call a "clustering of sexual risk behaviors." Find one, and you're likely to find the others.

In the article in the journal Pediatrics, the authors point out other perils of sexual texts, which can be forwarded with ease, leading to traumatic social situations. Such texts can also run afoul of child pornography laws.

Pediatricians should include sexting in discussing sexual activity with adolescents. Schools should also take on the topic.

Their final suggestion? Get kids signed up for emerging healthy text messaging services like San Francisco's www.SexTextsf.org/, which allows teens to ask awkward questions (like "what do I do if the condom broke?").

- Los Angeles Times

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Children and adolescents who are obese may have less-sensitive taste buds than kids of normal weight do, new research finds.

In a German study published in the BMJ Group's Archives of Disease in Childhood, simple taste tests were given to 99 obese kids and 94 kids of normal weight. Each of the young people, who ranged in age from 6 to 18, tasted 20 strips of paper treated with varying concentrations of substances linked to the five known qualities of taste: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. They were asked to identify which of the five qualities the strip represented. A perfect score of 20 means that the taster correctly identified each of the five qualities at all four levels of intensity.

By and large, the obese youths had more trouble discerning tastes than the others did: The average score among the obese youngsters was 12.6, compared with 14 among the normal-weight kids. The obese kids had particular trouble identifying salty, umami, and bitter tastes.

That lack of sensitivity could help govern kids' food choices, perhaps steering them away from more healthful foods that their palates perceive as less satisfying and prompting them to consume greater quantities of certain foods to achieve a desired taste sensation, the study suggests.

A second experiment focused just on sweet taste, with participants asked to distinguish varying levels of sweetness presented on test strips. Obese and normal-weight kids all did a good job of accurately ranking the levels of sweetness, but the obese kids tended to rate the levels of sweetness lower than the other kids did. Outside the lab, that might translate to a child's requiring a more highly sweetened food to satisfy his or her sweet tooth - which could mean more calories and perhaps add up to more pounds. - Washington Post

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Over the last decade, off-label use of antipsychotic drugs has surged among children enrolled in Medicaid, according to a new study.

"Off-label use" is the term for prescribing drugs for a purpose not yet approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In the study, researchers from the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found a 62 percent jump in the number of publicly insured children between the ages of 3 and 18 on antipsychotics. The study, published online in Health Services Research, covered 35 percent of the country's children.

The increase is due in part to a rise in the number of mental health diagnoses that children are getting. The drugs are often given for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or conduct disorder. Children with three or more mental disorders were also among the largest group of kids taking antipsychotics. Children with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and autism were also most likely to be on these drugs.

The rise in off-label use of antipsychotics is a growing concern because these drugs have been linked to greater risk for serious side effects in children, including weight gain and diabetes, the researchers pointed out.

"If a child is prescribed an antipsychotic, it's important for doctors to inform parents and caregivers if the drug is being prescribed off-label, of potential side effects, and of counseling therapies that might be offered as an alternative to medication," the study's senior author, David Rubin, codirector of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia PolicyLab, said in a news release.
- HealthDay News