CDC: US facing uptick in measles

December 6, 2013 By Leave a Comment

December 6, 2013
CDC report on measlesUSA Today (12/6, Szabo) reports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has announced the US faces a spike in measles, with nine outbreaks and 175 confirmed cases to date in 2013, which roughly triples the yearly average, according to Director Thomas Frieden, MD. He added, “This isn’t the failure of a vaccine; it’s the failure to vaccinate,” as over 98% of patients failed to receive vaccinations. The paper notes that, while the disease has been virtually eliminated throughout the West, the US still sees an average of 60 “imported” cases each year, primarily among visitors from abroad. The article also attributes the spike to parents who refuse vaccinations, however, acknowledging that many of them live in the same communities.

Reuters (12/6, Beasley) reports the CDC acknowledges at least 172 of this year’s 175 US cases involved patients infected overseas or who caught the disease from somebody who traveled internationally, while the sources of the other three infections are yet to be determined.
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Teen smoking down but use of cigars, e-cigarettes up

November 15, 2013 By Leave a Comment

November 15, 2013
e-cigThe Wall Street Journal (11/14, Esterl, Subscription Publication, 5.91M) is part of the group of US national media outlets reporting on new findings from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that were published yesterday. Though the CDC revealed that cigarette use among minors in the US is dropping over last year, the use of alternative tobacco products, such as miniature cigars, electronic cigarettes, and hookah, has risen. The Wall Street Journal focuses on the first of that group, cigarillos and little cigars, as being the second most used tobacco product among teenagers.

Virtually every other source reporting paid more attention to the CDC’s findings regarding hookahs and e-cigarettes in particular, with USA Today (11/15, Koch, 5.82M) saying that the CDC’s 2012 National Youth Tobacco Survey among middle- and high-school students in the US “found a notable increase” in the number of respondents saying they have used hookahs and e-cigarettes, “both of which aren’t federally regulated and taxed as are cigarettes.”
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Poverty, neglect tied to smaller brain volumes in kids

October 29, 2013 By

October 29, 2013
Bloomberg News (10/28, Ostrow, 1.91M) reported that, according to a study published online Oct. 28 in JAMA Pediatrics, “poverty and lack of nurturing in early life may have a direct effect on a child’s brain development” in that “smaller brain volumes” were found “in poor, neglected children.”

The CBS News (10/29, Castillo, 3.87M) website reports that that researchers used magnetic resonance imaging to scan the brains of 145 children from greater St. Louis, MO. The scans revealed that the youngsters “who grew up in impoverished environments had smaller white and cortical gray matter volumes in the brain, in addition to a smaller hippocampal and amygdala volume.” What’s more, “poor children were linked to smaller hippocampal volumes in the left and right hemispheres if they had less parental nurturing.”
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CDC: Influenza may be fatal even in healthy kids

October 28, 2013 By

October 28, 2013
CDC Flu danger to kidsUSA Today (10/28, Hellmich, 5.82M) reports that, according to research to appear in the November issue of the journal Pediatrics, influenza “can be fatal to children, even healthy kids who don’t have other medical conditions.” Investigators at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered that “830 kids died from flu-related complications between October 2004 and September 2012, and most of those children had not gotten a flu vaccine.” According to CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, “All too often, people dismiss flu as a mild illness, but every year, children, including healthy children, die from flu.”

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