Sick newborns at The Golisano Children’s Hospital of Southwest Florida are housed about a dozen per room — an arrangement that allows doctors and nurses to communicate with each other and easily spot signs of medical trouble.
Read More at News-Press.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska senator is pushing for physicians to provide information about support and hospice care to parents who learn their unborn child has an abnormality and is likely to die within three months of birth, prompting emotional testimony from women on Friday to a legislative committee.
Read More at Hasting Tribune.
Women who have premature babies are more likely than other mothers to develop heart disease later in life, even if they didn’t have any risk factors for cardiovascular problems before pregnancy, a recent study suggests.
Read more at Reuters.
Feb. 8 (UPI) -- A study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has found that premature babies are exposed to unsafe noise levels in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.
Researchers found that preemies were exposed to noise levels higher than what is considered safe by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Read more at UPI.
MEXICO CITY — Mexico’s health ministry has confirmed the first case of a Zika-related severe birth defect known as microcephaly.
The ministry said in a statement Friday that the child was premature and died at birth. It was born to a 25-year-old woman from the southern state of Oaxaca on Nov. 5, 2016.
Read more at The Washington Post.
Most Americans support requiring the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine for public school children in order to protect public health. They see high preventative measures to such vaccines and low risk of side effects, and they consider the benefits of the vaccines to outweigh the risks.
More at Pew.
TUESDAY, Jan. 31, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Administration of azithromycin during labor is associated with a reduction in maternal and neonatal clinical infections, according to a study published online Jan. 27 in Pediatrics.
Claire Oluwalana, M.D., from the Medical Research Council Unit in Banjul, the Gambia, and colleagues conducted a randomized trial involving 829 Gambian women in labor. Participants were given an oral dose of azithromycin or placebo and were followed for up to eight weeks after delivery.
Read more at Physicians Briefing.
LAS VEGAS -- Rates of maternal and neonatal mortality and morbidities were higher on weekends than weekdays in the U.S., but there was no significant "July effect" observed by month of delivery, researchers said here.
In a retrospective study, the maternal mortality ratio was significantly higher on weekends than weekdays (21.4 versus 14.6 per 100,000 live births, P<0.01), reported Amirhossein Moaddab, MD, of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, and colleagues.
More at MedPage Today.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning consumers not to use certain homeopathic teething products that contain belladonna, a toxic substance.
Read more at AAP News and Journals.
THURSDAY, Jan. 26, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Severe birth defects cause about one in every five infant deaths in the United States. Now, new research finds that the odds for one of these tragic events rise if a newborn is covered by Medicaid rather than private insurance.
For babies born at term, deaths due to birth defects "were approximately 45 percent higher for deliveries covered by Medicaid than those covered by private insurance," said a team led by Lynn Almli. She's from the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, part of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
More at HealthDay News.
Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology found women who lacked B12 in their diets were more likely to have preterm babies.
The study of 11,216 pregnancies in 11 countries showed that low levels of B12, commonly found in animal products, were linked to increased risk for preterm births. Vitamin B12 is vital for the production of red blood cells and cellular metabolic energy.
Read more at UPI.
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) may increase a first-time mother's risk of postpartum depression, and a history of maternal depression along with GDM further increases that risk, according to a study published online Jan. 18 in Depression and Anxiety.
The analysis of data from more than 700,000 women in Sweden showed that GDM alone raised the risk for postpartum depression. However, that risk rose even more if a woman had previously been diagnosed with depression.
Read more at Physician's Briefing.
(Reuters Health) - Adolescents who were born extremely premature are much more likely to have chronic health problems than their peers who were delivered at full term, a Swedish study suggests.
Pregnancy normally lasts 40 weeks, and babies born after 37 weeks are considered full term. The study focused on extremely preterm infants, delivered at 23 to 25 weeks of gestation.
Read more at Reuters.
(Reuters Health) - Waiting at least three minutes to clamp the umbilical cord after birth is associated with a lower risk of anemia in babies, according to a study in Nepal.
Children with anemia and iron deficiency may have impaired nervous system development, which affects cognitive and motor abilities and behavior. Typically, they're treated with foods and supplements that provide extra iron, but some previous research has suggested delayed umbilical cord clamping may reduce the odds of iron deficiency by giving babies a transfusion of iron-rich blood from the placenta.
More at Reuters.
The pertussis rate among infants younger than 12 months of age is high, and the incidence is highest among 3-month-olds, according to a nationwide study of 1.2 million infants.
Pertussis is the least-controlled bacterial disease for which a vaccine is universally recommended, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, limited data are available on the disease burden in U.S. infants.
More at AAP News.
TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- About 119,000 children worldwide are born each year with fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS), a new report finds.
The syndrome refers to a group of conditions that include poor growth for the baby both in the womb and after birth, and mental, physical and developmental problems for the child that can last through adulthood, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Read more at Health Day.
TUESDAY, Jan. 17, 2017 (HealthDay News) -- Over a decade, there was a nearly fivefold increase in the number of babies born each year to American women who have used opioids, a federal government report says.
There was also a dramatic rise in the number of infants born with a dependency on opioids, the report found. These drugs include heroin and prescription painkillers such as fentanyl, oxycodone (OxyContin) and hydrocodone/acetaminophen (Vicodin).
More at Health Day.
About three of every 100 U.S. newborns have a serious birth defect, and health care costs tied to these difficulties total almost $23 billion annually, new research shows.
The findings might help "motivate change" in reducing costs associated with birth defects through "prevention, early detection and care throughout the life span," said researchers from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read more at Health Day.
The stress of having a sick baby in the hospital can be enough to make even the nicest parent take some of their fears and frustrations out on the doctors and nurses.
But a new study suggests infants may receive better care if their parents take a deep breath and try harder to be nice. That’s because rudeness by parents was linked to worse performances by medical teams that care for babies in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), researchers report in Pediatrics.
More at Reuters.
Many breastfed infants may not get enough vitamin D because their mothers prefer not to give babies supplement drops, a study suggests.
Pediatricians recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed infants until at least six months of age because it can reduce babies’ risk of ear and respiratory infections, sudden infant death syndrome, allergies, childhood obesity and diabetes.
More at Reuters.