Entries for July 2008

When the American Heart Association recommended in April that all 2.5 million children taking stimulant drugs for ADHD should have an electrocardiogram to screen for hidden heart problems (because a small number of these children die from abnormal heart rhythms), it came as an unpleasant surprise for parents. Turns out it was an unpleasant surprise for the American Academy of Pediatrics, too, which got the news just a few hours before the recommendation went public. So, a few weeks later, the pediatricians released their own recommendation: No ECGs.

What should parents make of this expert smackdown? "The evidence is clearly not there to support the notion of routine ECGs for children being put on ADHD medications," insists James Perrin, chief of general pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and author of the new AAP report to be published in the August Pediatrics. "We are very clear in saying, 'No, we do not believe your child should have an ECG.' " The pediatricians posted their no-ECGs manifesto on their website on May 28, but word is only now filtering out.

Hurricane Dolly was no Katrina, but that doesn't mean it wasn't traumatic for children—even if they live 1,000 miles away from South Texas. CNN endlessly flashed photos of Dolly's sinister spiral, along with repeated shots of flooded houses and cars. I found the nonstop coverage disturbing—and I'm old enough not to be afraid of thunder.

So it was my good luck that Mark Kennedy Shriver, vice president of Save the Children, stopped by U.S. News yesterday. This nonprofit works to help the 2.5 million poor children in rural areas, and aided in the recovery effort after Katrina. When workers discovered that many shelters had no place for children to play, and that parents struggled to keep kids safe and entertained at the same time they were trying to figure out the future, the group started deploying staff to help families cope and now provides Red Cross shelters with toy-filled "Safe Space" kits. Shriver, speaking as a parent of three young kids, says: "If you're in a rec center with three kids and there's nothing for those kids to do, your head's going to explode. Those are emotional scars that are going to last for years."

Learning how to put on a condom at work can make it easier to talk with your kids about sex.

I read that startling bit of news in the latest British Medical Journal and made a call lickety-split to Mark Schuster. He's the brains behind "Talking Parents, Healthy Teens," a worksite-based parenting program that includes the condom lesson. Schuster also happens to be the chief of general pediatrics at Children's Hospital Boston and coauthor of Everything You Never Wanted Your Kids to Know About Sex, but Were Afraid They'd Ask. Once I got Schuster on the phone, I asked a tough, probing journalist question: What the heck? Here's his explanation:

Why on Earth did you decide to try teaching parents about sex ed in the workplace?
Everyone told me it was a stretch. But the parents in my practice were coming to me and saying, "I need help." And with sex ed in the schools, people were really up in arms. The one thing that everyone agreed on is that the parents have to play a bigger role. That's the common ground.

It's been an amazing year for discoveries about autism and genes-and it's only July. The latest news: Some genes involved in the disorder may affect the brain's ability to develop in response to experience, a key aspect of learning.

That follows the report in January that scientists with the Boston-based Autism Consortium had found a genetic variation on chromosome 16 shared by 1 percent of people with autism. In March, researchers reported that about 15 percent of autism cases result from random spontaneous mutations that are unique to each person, rather than an inherited "disease gene."

Oh, sheesh, I thought, not another screening test that requires dragging kids to the doctor. But that's just what the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends for many children as young as 2. And it's a fasting cholesterol test, no less—the kind where you don't eat for 14 hours before giving up blood. Imagine a hungry, cranky toddler facing a needle. No fun.

Still, Frank Greer convinced me that we parents should take this new directive seriously. "I think this is pretty important," says Greer, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin and chairman of the committee on nutrition for the AAP. "If the kid is overweight, he's definitely at risk for cardiovascular disease." One third of all children are now in the danger zone. Greer says, "This will bring it home to the parents that this kid is at risk if they don't do something about it." The new guidelines also for the first time call for kids to get cholesterol-lowering drugs if needed.

Yanking teenagers' driver's licenses if they're caught using a fake ID to buy alcohol may be one of the most useful new tools in reducing the risk of drinking and driving, according to a study of state laws aimed at discouraging teenage drinking. But some of the more high-profile efforts, including penalties for adults who host underage parties and, for teens, graduated driver's licenses that prohibit night driving, didn't appear to do any good.

"Almost everyone knows that it's illegal to use a fake ID," says Jim Fell, a researcher at the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Calverton, Md., who conducted the study, published in the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention. Six states suspend licenses for using fake IDs, and those states saw the only significant reduction in drunk-driving fatalities among teenagers from 1998 to 2004, a drop of 7 percent, based on federal accident data.