These extreme measures to reduce exposure to nuts are fuelling anxiety in parents, leading to more sensitisation, and creating the very epidemic they are designed to stop. A recent study has suggested that early exposure to peanuts actually reduces, rather than increases the risk of allergy.
A 4-year-old boy in Beaumont, Texas, apparently couldn't wait for Christmas. He unlocked a door at his home around 3 a.m. and walked into the street. He reached the the Family Dollar discount store on the other side and started trying doors. The store was closed, but somebody had left one door unlocked — which explains why, when police responded to the silent alarm, they discovered the boy eager to show them all his new toys.
As the odds were in favour of men with more sons seeing a son return from the war, those sons were more likely to father boys themselves because they inherited that tendency from their fathers. In contrast, men with more daughters may have lost their only sons in the war and those sons would have been more likely to father girls. This would explain why the men that survived the war were more likely to have male children, which resulted in the boy-baby boom.
Three drugs will be tested in humans to treat rare, inherited conditions that are often linked to autism: Rett syndrome, fragile X, and tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC). Scientists hope that the new drugs, if successful in the current trials, will eventually help treat more common forms of autism, which affects about 1 in 166 children in the United States. Existing drugs are used to treat symptoms of autism, such as digestive problems and psychosis, rather than the root of the disease.
Babies born by Caesarean section are more likely to develop asthma than children delivered naturally, Swiss researchers said on Tuesday.
There has been conflicting evidence on the link between asthma and C-sections but the researchers said the number of children involved in their study and a long monitoring period strengthened their results.
Dr. Emanuel, whose brother, Rahm, is the president-elect’s chief of staff, said he was surprised by how lopsided the findings were. “We found very few studies that had any positive association” for children’s health, he said.
Researchers sought to look at the health effects of a wide array of media and distill 30 years of research into a simple message. “The average parent doesn’t understand that if you plop your kids down in front of the TV or the computer for five hours a day, it can change their brain development, it can make them fat, and it can lead them to get involved in risky sexual activity at a young age,” Mr. Steyer said.
