An important predictor of the severity of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants may be what their mothers ate during pregnancy, according to a Vanderbilt study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. RSV is the most common cause of severe lower...
Mothers who experience economic and psychological abuse during the first year of a relationship with their child's father are more likely to become depressed and spank the child in year five, researchers from the Rutgers School of Social Work have found. The Rutgers team, which studied the...
Functional somatic symptoms (FSS) are physical complaints, such as headaches, pain, fatigue, and dizziness, that cannot be explained medically. These symptoms affect 10-30% of children and adolescents and account for 2-4% of all pediatric doctor visits. A new study scheduled for publication in...
The newborns of obese pregnant women suffering from obstructive sleep apnea are more likely to be admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit than those born to obese mothers without the sleep disorder, reports a study published online today in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology. Sleep apnea...
Frequent antenatal screening has allowed doctors to detect and treat malaria in its early stages on the border of Thailand and Myanmar, dramatically reducing the number of deaths amongst pregnant women. In an analysis of 25 years' worth of data, in 50,981 women, from antenatal clinics at the...
While HIV programs provide lifesaving care and treatment to millions of people in lower-income countries, there have been concerns that as these programs expand, they divert investments from other health priorities such as maternal health. Researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of...
Maternal smoking can lead to lung disease in babies, including asthma. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Respiratory Research shows that maternal smoking-related defects within the alveoli inside the lungs of offspring are associated with a disruption in retinoic...
Hold off on those brunch plans and the visions of spending a day chore-free and at the spa. Supermodel Christy Turlington Burns wants all of us moms to boycott Mother's Day this year. No gifts, no phone calls, no Facebook posts. Disappear, spend the day in silence, she says. Why? It's her way of...
Children born to obese, hypertensive or diabetic mothers are 60% more likely to be autistic or have other developmental delays, according to a new study. This adds to a wealth of evidence linking maternal obesity with unhealthy or impaired children. Yet whenever the issue of pregnancy and weight...
A newborn baby's weight loss is often used to determine how well a baby is breastfeeding, and concern about a baby which loses too much weight may result in supplementing breastfeeding with formula. However, many women receive IV fluids during labor, and new research published in BMC's open...
Scientists now understand more about why being exposed to nicotine while you were a fetus will increase your risk of developing cardiovascular disease as an adult. "We have found distinct links between cigarette smoking or even using nicotine patches or gum and the long-term harm for the child,"...
Children whose mothers or grandmothers smoked during pregnancy are at increased risk of asthma in childhood, but the underlying causes of this are not well understood. Now a new study indicates changes in a process called DNA methylation that occurs before birth may be a root cause. The study...
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete were in Geneva on Wednesday to open a meeting aimed at "developing a framework" to monitor the implementation of a $40 billion U.N. maternal and child health initiative, according to CBC News. Harper and Kikwete are...
Researchers have reported some of the first evidence that chimpanzee youngsters in the wild may tend to play differently depending on their sex, just as human children around the world do. Although both young male and female chimpanzees play with sticks, females do so more often, and they...
Education for women is the most important factor for positively influencing the health of women and children, Indian President Pratibha Patil said on Saturday at a meeting in New Delhi of The Partnership for Maternal, Newborn & Child Health (PMNCH), IANS/Sify News reports. "Education is a...
New research released today takes a look at birth outcomes and maternal smoking, building urgency for more states and cities to join the nationwide smoke-free trend that has accelerated in recent years. According to the new data, strong smoke-free policies can improve fetal outcomes by...
The number of women dying due to complications during pregnancy and childbirth has decreased by 34% from an estimated 546 000 in 1990 to 358 000 in 2008, according to a new report, Trends in maternal mortality, released by the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Children's Fund...
Delegations arrived in Kampala, Uganda, for the start of the 15th African Union (AU) Summit, which begins Monday, the Daily Monitor reports (Muyita/Kasasira, 7/19). "The summit will address various issues, including health, infrastructure and food security. It will also tackle security...
The G8's $5-billion initiative to improve maternal and child health "left many loose ends that need to be tied up before the countries can begin to make good on their commitment to save the lives of 1.3 million children under age five, and 64,000 mothers," the Canadian Press/Globe and Mail...
Efforts to curb poverty worldwide have been slowed by the global economic situation, but the developing world is still on track to reach the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the number of people living on less than $1 per day by 2015 - according to an annual U.N. report (.pdf) on the...