Category: Paediatrics

Categories : Immune System PaediatricsTags :

Prenatal Exposure to PFAS ‘Forever Chemicals’ Shapes Baby Immunity

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PFAS lurks in numerous consumer products – from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant fabrics and personal care items. Photo by Cooker King on Unsplash

New research reveals that tiny amounts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS; widely known as “forever chemicals”) cross the placenta and breast milk to alter infants’ developing immune systems, potentially leaving lasting imprints on their ability to fight disease.

University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) researchers tracked 200 local healthy mother–baby pairs, measuring common PFAS compounds in maternal blood during pregnancy and then profiling infants’ key T‑cell populations at birth, six months, and one year. By age 12 months, babies whose mothers had higher prenatal PFAS exposure exhibited significantly fewer T follicular helper (Tfh) cells – vital coaches that help B cells produce strong, long‑lasting antibodies – and disproportionately more Th2, Th1, and regulatory T cells (Tregs), each linked to allergies, autoimmunity, or immune suppression when out of balance.

“This is the first study to identify changes in specific immune cells that are in the process of developing at the time of PFAS exposure,” said Kristin Scheible, MD, an associate professor of Pediatrics and Microbiology & Immunology at URMC and lead author of the study, which appears in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives. “Identification of these particular cells and pathways opens up the potential for early monitoring or mitigation strategies for the effects of PFAS exposure, in order to prevent lifelong diseases.”

Implications for vaccines, allergies, and autoimmunity

Tfh cell depletion helps explain previous findings that higher PFAS levels in children correlate with weaker vaccine responses to tetanus, measles, and other routine immunisations. Conversely, the uptick in Th2 and Treg cells can predispose to allergic inflammation or dampened defences, while excess Th1 activity raises concerns about future autoimmune conditions such as juvenile arthritis or type 1 diabetes.

“The cells impacted by PFAS exposure play important roles in fighting infections and establishing long-term memory to vaccines,” said Darline Castro Meléndez, PhD, a researcher in Scheible’s lab and first author of the study. “An imbalance at a time when the immune system is learning how and when to respond can lead to a higher risk of recurrent infections with more severe symptoms that could carry on through their lifetime.”

Minimising PFAS exposure

Although Rochester’s drinking water meets current safety standards, PFAS lurks in numerous consumer products – from nonstick cookware and food packaging to stain-resistant fabrics and personal care items. The study’s mothers had relatively low PFAS blood levels compared to other regions, yet the immune shifts were pronounced even in this small sample.

While not all environmental exposures can be avoided, families can reduce PFAS contact during critical windows of foetal and infant immune development. “Use water filters, minimise cooking in damaged nonstick pans, switch to alternatives like stainless steel or cast iron, and store food in glass or ceramic containers,” said Scheible. “Small steps can help lower the cumulative burden of exposure.”

The team plans a longer follow-up to determine whether these early T‑cell imbalances persist into toddlerhood and whether they translate into more infections, allergies, or autoimmune diseases. Measuring PFAS in infants directly and unravelling the molecular underpinnings of these immune disruptions are key objectives for future research.

Source: University of Rochester

Categories : Paediatrics Surgeries & ProceduresTags :

Researchers Use Fitbits to Predict Children’s Surgery Complications

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Photo by Natanael Melchor on Unsplash

Although postoperative complications, such as infections, can pose significant health risks to children after undergoing surgical procedures, timely detection following hospital discharge can prove challenging.

A new study from Northwestern University, along with other institutions, is the first to use consumer wearables to quickly and precisely predict postoperative complications in children and shows potential for facilitating faster treatment and care. The study appears in Science Advances.

“Today, consumer wearables are ubiquitous, with many of us relying on them to count our steps, measure our sleep and more,” said senior author Arun Jayaraman, professor at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and a scientist at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab. “Our study is the first to take this widely available technology and train the algorithm using new metrics that are more sensitive in detecting complications. Our results suggest great promise for better patient outcomes and have broad implications for paediatric health monitoring across various care settings.”

How the study worked

As part of the study, commercially available Fitbit devices were given to 103 children for 21 days immediately after appendectomy, the most common surgery in children, which results in complications up to 38% of the time. Rather than just using the metrics automatically captured by the Fitbit to identify signs of complications (eg, low activity, high heart rate, etc.), Shirley Ryan AbilityLab scientists trained the algorithm using new metrics related to the circadian rhythms of a child’s activity and heart rate patterns. 

In the process, they found such metrics were more sensitive to picking up complications than the traditional metrics. In fact, in analysing the data, scientists were able to retrospectively predict postoperative complications up to three days before formal diagnosis with 91% sensitivity and 74% specificity. 

“Historically, we have been reliant upon subjective reporting from children – who often have greater difficulty articulating their symptoms – and their caregivers following hospital discharge. As a result, complications are not always caught right away,” said study author Dr Fizan Abdullah, who at the time of the study was an attending physician of paediatric surgery at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and a professor at Feinberg. “By using widely available wearables, coupled with this novel algorithm, we have an opportunity to change the paradigm of postoperative monitoring and care – and improve outcomes for kids in the process.”

What’s next?

This research is part of a four-year National Institutes of Health-funded project. As a next step, scientists plan to transition this approach into a real-time (vs retrospective) system that analyses data automatically and sends alerts to children’s clinical teams. 

“This study reinforces wearables’ potential to complement clinical care for better patient recoveries,” said Hassan M.K. Ghomrawi, vice chair of research and innovation in the department of orthopaedic surgery at University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Our team is eager to enter the next phase of research exploration.”

Source: Northwestern University

Categories : Neurodegenerative Diseases PaediatricsTags :

Why Do Newborns Have Elevated Levels of an Alzheimer’s Biomarker?

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Photo by Pedro Kümmel on Unsplash

What do the brains of newborns and patients with Alzheimer’s disease have in common? Researchers from the University of Gothenburg, led by first author Fernando Gonzalez-Ortiz and senior author Professor Kaj Blennow, recently reported that both newborns and Alzheimer’s patients have elevated blood levels of a protein called phosphorylated tau, specifically a form called p-tau217.

While this protein has been largely used as a diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease, with an increase in p-tau217 blood levels proposed to be driven by another process, namely aggregation of b-amyloid protein into amyloid plaques. Newborns (for natural reasons) do not have this type of pathological change, so interestingly, in newborns increased plasma p-tau217 seems to reflect a completely different – and entirely healthy – mechanism.

In a large international study that involved Sweden, Spain and Australia, researchers analyzed blood samples from over 400 individuals, including healthy newborns, premature infants, young adults, elderly adults, and people diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. They found that newborn babies had the highest levels of p-tau217 – even higher than those found in people with Alzheimer’s. These levels were particularly elevated in premature babies and started to decrease over the first few months of life, eventually settling to adult levels.

First time in the blood of newborns

Previous research, largely based on animal models, had hinted at the role of phosphorylated tau in early brain development. This is the first time scientists have directly measured p-tau217 concentrations in the blood of human newborns, opening the door to a much clearer understanding of its developmental role.

But here’s where it gets fascinating, while in Alzheimer’s disease p-tau217 is associated with tau aggregation into harmful clumps called tangles, believed to cause the breakdown of brain cells and subsequent cognitive decline. In contrast, in newborns this surge in tau appears to support healthy brain development, helping neurons grow and to form new connections with other neurons, thereby shaping the structure of the young brain.

The study also revealed that in both healthy and premature babies, p-tau217 levels were closely linked to how early they were born. The earlier the birth, the higher the levels of this protein, suggesting a role in supporting rapid brain growth under challenging developmental conditions.

Potential roadmap for new treatments 

What’s perhaps most compelling about these findings, published in the journal Brain Communications, is the hint that our brains may once have had built-in protection against the damaging effects of tau, so that newborns can tolerate, and even benefit from, high levels of phosphorylated tau without triggering the kinds of damage seen in Alzheimer’s.

“We believe that understanding how this natural protection works – and why we lose it as we age – could offer a roadmap for new treatments. If we can learn how the newborn brain keeps tau in check, we might one day mimic those processes to slow or stop Alzheimer’s in its tracks”, says Fernando Gonzalez-Ortiz.

So while an increase of p-tau217 is a danger signal in older brains, in newborns it might be a vital part of building one. The same molecule, two dramatically different roles – one building the brain, the other marking its decline.

Plasma p-tau217 has recently received FDA approval for use in diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease, making it an increasingly important tool in clinical settings. The authors emphasise

Source: the need to also understand the mechanism for the increase in p-tau217, especially for interpreting it as an outcome in clinical and epidemiological research and in drug development. This study indicate that amyloid plaques may not be the main driver of increases in p-tau217.

Source: University of Gothenburg

Categories : PaediatricsTags :

Why Caffeine Might Hold the Key to Preventing Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

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Photo by William Fortunato on Pexels

After decades of stalled national progress in reducing the rate of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID), a category of infant mortality that includes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), researchers at Rutgers Health have proposed an unexpected solution: Caffeine might protect babies by preventing dangerous drops in oxygen that may trigger deaths.

The hypothesis, published in the Journal of Perinatology, comes as the number of SUID cases has plateaued in the US at about 3500 deaths a year for 25 years or one death for every 1000 live births. Despite an initial decline in the 1990s with the introduction of widespread education campaigns promoting back to sleep and other safe infant sleep recommendations by the American Academy of Pediatrics, SIDS, even on its own, remains the leading cause of death in infants between 1 and 12 months old.

“We’ve been concerned about why the rates haven’t changed,” said Thomas Hegyi, a neonatologist at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School who led the research. “So, we wanted to explore new ways of approaching the challenge.”

That approach led Hegyi and Ostfeld to a striking realisation: Virtually all known risk factors for SIDS and other sleep-related infant deaths, from stomach sleeping to maternal smoking to bed-sharing to preterm birth, have one thing in common. They are all associated with intermittent hypoxia, brief episodes where oxygen levels drop below 80%.

“I wondered, what can counter intermittent hypoxia?” Hegyi said. “Caffeine.”

The connection isn’t entirely theoretical. Neonatologists already use caffeine to treat apnoea in premature infants, where it works as a respiratory stimulant. The drug has an excellent safety profile in babies, with minimal side effects even at high doses.

What makes caffeine particularly intriguing as a proposed preventive measure is how differently infants process it. While adults metabolise caffeine in about four hours, the half-life in newborns can be as long as 100 hours. Caffeine remains in an infant’s system for weeks, not hours.

This unique metabolism might explain a long-standing puzzle: why SIDS peaks between two and four months of age. As infants mature, they begin metabolising caffeine more quickly. The researchers suggest caffeine consumed during pregnancy or passed through breast milk might provide early protection that wanes as metabolism speeds up.

The theory also could explain why breastfeeding appears to protect against SIDS.

“We hypothesize that the protection afforded by breast milk is, in part, due to caffeine,” wrote the researchers, noting caffeine readily passes from mothers to infants through breast milk.

Barbara Ostfeld, a professor at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, the programme director of the SIDS Center of New Jersey and co-author of the paper, said if the theory proves true, any efforts to give infants caffeine would complement, not replace, existing risk reduction strategies.

“The idea isn’t that caffeine will replace risk-reduction behaviours,” Ostfeld said. “A baby dying from accidental suffocation, one component of SUID, is not likely to have benefited from caffeine but would have from such safe sleep practices as the elimination of pillows and other loose bedding from the infant’s sleep environment.”

The researchers plan to test their hypothesis by comparing caffeine levels in infants who died of SIDS with those who died from other causes, such as trauma or disease.

The research represents a fundamental shift in approaching SIDS prevention. While current strategies focus on eliminating environmental risks, this would be the first potential pharmaceutical intervention.

“For over 30 years, we’ve been educating New Jersey’s parents about adopting safe infant sleep practices.  These efforts have contributed to our state rates being the second lowest in the US.  Still, for various reasons, these proven recommendations are not universally adopted,” Ostfeld said. “This new hypothesis offers a way not just to address important risk factors but potentially intervene.”

Crucially, the researchers said this is hypothesis-generating research meant to inspire further study, not a recommendation for parents to give their babies caffeine. Any intervention would require extensive testing for safety and efficacy.

Still, in a field where progress has stagnated for decades, the possibility of a new approach offers hope.

As Hegyi put it, the goal is “to stimulate new thinking about a problem that has remained unchanged for 25 years.”

Source: Rutgers University

Categories : Cardiovascular Disease Implants and Prostheses PaediatricsTags :

Heart Valve Which ‘Grows’ with Young Children Undergoing Preclinical Testing

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The Iris Valve, a transcatheter, growth-accommodating pulmonary valve designed for very young children, was developed at UC Irvine and is currently progressing toward FDA clinical approval. Arash Kheradvar

Researchers at the University of California, Irvine have successfully performed preclinical laboratory testing of a replacement heart valve intended for toddlers and young children with congenital cardiac defects, a key step toward obtaining approval for human use. The results of their study were published recently in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

The management of patients with congenital heart disease who require surgical pulmonary valve replacement typically occurs between the ages of 2 and 10. To be eligible for a minimally invasive transcatheter pulmonary valve procedure, patients currently must weigh at least 20.4kg. For children to receive minimally invasive treatment, they must be large enough so that their veins can accommodate the size of a crimped replacement valve. The Iris Valve designed and developed by the UC Irvine team can be implanted in children weighing as little as 7.7 to 10kg and gradually expanded to an adult diameter as they grow.

Research and development of the Iris Valve has been supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; and the National Science Foundation.

This funding has enabled benchtop fracture testing, which demonstrated the valve’s ability to be crimped down to a 3mm diameter for transcatheter delivery and subsequently enlarged to 20mm without damage, as well as six-month animal studies that confirmed successful device integration within the pulmonary valve annulus, showing valve integrity and a favourable tissue response.

“We are pleased to see the Iris Valve performing as we expected in laboratory bench tests and as implants in Yucatan mini pigs, a crucial measure of the device’s feasibility,” said lead author Arash Kheradvar, UC Irvine professor of biomedical engineering. “This work represents the result of longstanding collaboration between our team at UC Irvine and Dr Michael Recto at Children’s Hospital of Orange County built over several years of joint research and development.”

Congenital heart defects affect about 1% of children born in the United States and Europe, with over 1 million cases in the US alone. These conditions often necessitate surgical interventions early in life, with additional procedures required to address a leaky pulmonary valve and prevent right ventricular failure as children grow.

The Iris Valve can be implanted via a minimally invasive catheter through the patient’s femoral vein. The Kheradvar group employed origami folding techniques to compress the device into a 12-French transcatheter system, reducing its diameter to no more than 3mm. Over time, the valve can be balloon-expanded up to its full 20mm diameter.

This implantation method, along with the ability to begin treatment earlier in very young patients, helps mitigate the risk of complications from delayed care and reduces the need for multiple surgeries in this vulnerable population.

“Once the Iris Valve comes to fruition, it will save hundreds of children at least one operation – if not two – throughout the course of their lives,” said Recto, an interventional paediatric cardiologist at CHOC who’s also a clinical professor of paediatrics at UC Irvine. “It will save them from having to undergo surgical pulmonary valve placement, as the Iris Valve is delivered via a small catheter in the vein and can be serially dilated to an adult diameter and also facilitate the future placement of larger transcatheter pulmonary valves – with sizes greater than 20 millimetres, like the Melody, Harmony and Sapien devices – if needed.”

Source: University of California, Irvine

Categories : Paediatrics Pain ManagementTags :

Newborns Can Sense Pain Before They Can Understand It

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Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash

Brain networks responsible for sensing, understanding, and responding emotionally to pain develop at different rates in infants, with the conscious understanding of pain not fully developed until after birth, finds a new study led by UCL (University College London) researchers.

The authors of the study, published in the journal Pain, investigated how different types of pain processing develop very early on, by scanning the brains of infants born prematurely.

Lead author Professor Lorenzo Fabrizi (UCL Neuroscience, Physiology & Pharmacology) said: “Pain is a complex experience with physical, emotional, and cognitive elements. In adults, pain processing relies on a functional network of brain regions called the ‘pain connectome’, with different regions working together to help us experience pain, each part responsible for different aspects of it.

“In newborn babies, this network is underdeveloped, which could mean that pain experience in newborns is totally different from the way we, as adults, understand it.”

The scientists, based at UCL, UCLH and King’s College London, were looking at three different components of pain processing: sensory-discriminative (identifying and localising the intensity and quality of pain), affective-motivational (resulting in the emotional response to pain), and cognitive-evaluative (the appraisal and interpretation of pain).

Using advanced brain imaging data from two of the largest available databases of brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the world – the Developing Human Connectome Project and the Human Connectome Project – the researchers mapped how these networks grow in a group of 372 infants, mostly born preterm, from less than 32 weeks up to 42 weeks after conception. The infants were all less than two weeks old when the scans took place, to ensure that the findings reflected the intrinsic brain maturation, without being affected by different experiences post-birth.

The researchers compared these findings to brain data from adults, as the mature pain-processing networks have previously been mapped out in other studies. The researchers analysed how much the brain networks known to be responsible for processing pain were functionally connected in infants at different ages.

The scientists found that the first subnetwork to reach adult levels in strength and connectivity is the sensory-discriminative network, at around 34-36 weeks after conception, so that babies can sense pain but are not yet fully capable of responding emotionally or interpreting the pain. Before this point, infants may have difficulty identifying what part of their body is experiencing pain. At around 36-38 weeks, the affective-motivational subnetwork reaches maturity, so that infants can identify pain as unpleasant and threatening.

The cognitive-evaluative subnetwork does not reach maturity until more than 42 weeks after conception, meaning that babies born at full term have still not fully developed the brain networks required to understand pain.

The research team had previously found in a 2023 study that preterm babies do not habituate to repeated pain experiences in medically necessary procedures (that is, their reaction to repeated pain does not reduce over time). The new finding that preterm babies have not fully developed the brain connections responsible for appraising pain may help to explain this.

Professor Fabrizi said: “Our results suggest that preterm babies may be particularly vulnerable to painful medical procedures during critical stages of brain development. The findings therefore emphasise the importance of informed paediatric care, including the role of tailored pain management and carefully planned timing of medical interventions for newborns, particularly those born preterm.”

Source: University College London

Categories : Metabolic Disorders PaediatricsTags :

Clinical Trial Shows Improved Health Outcomes for Teens with Type 1 Diabetes

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A new study in teenagers with type 1 diabetes shows promise in reducing chronic kidney disease and informing future precision care.

Photo by Nataliya Vaitkevich on Pexels

A clinical trial involving adolescents with type 1 diabetes (T1D) has found a combination therapy may reduce chronic kidney disease and improve health outcomes. The findings could help guide more precision care for young people with T1D. 

Led by Dr Farid Mahmud, Associate Scientist in the Translational Medicine program and Staff Physician in the Division of Endocrinology at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and published in Nature Medicine, the study evaluated a therapy that combines standard insulin treatment with the investigational drug dapagliflozin. Results of this combination therapy showed improved blood sugar control and kidney function, and reduced weight gain in adolescents with T1D. 

While most people with T1D are diagnosed as adults, the condition often starts in childhood and early adolescence. The lifelong insulin therapy needed can lead to side effects such as weight gain and chronic kidney disease. In the trial, participants who received dapagliflozin alongside insulin had fewer of these side effects and better overall health outcomes. 

“Our findings showed that adolescents who received this combination therapy were able to improve many symptoms typically associated with insulin-managed type one diabetes,” says Mahmud. “This could inform a new early intervention strategy for the growing population of teenagers with type one diabetes.” 

Patient partner key to trial success 

While previous research has shown similar results in adults, Mahmud’s team focused on designing a clinical trial specifically for teenagers, a group often underrepresented in clinical trials. Hormonal changes, psychological development, and the shared responsibility between teens and their parents for managing treatment protocols can make trial participation more complex for this age group. 

To address these challenges, the research team worked closely with patient partner Lynne McArthur. Together, they enrolled 98 participants between 12 and 18 years old in the study, known as the ATTEMPT study, across three sites. 

McArthur’s involvement in research began when one of her twin sons was diagnosed with T1D following a trip to the SickKids emergency department at just 18 months old. A few years later, his twin was also diagnosed. That experience led McArthur to become more involved in research efforts to improve diagnosis and treatment options for families like hers. 

“Deciding to participate in a clinical trial is an important decision, but my goal has always been disease prevention. I knew that our participation could help build a future where children don’t get T1D.”

Lynne McArthur

Now that her sons are older, McArthur continues to be involved as a patient advisor. She reviews recruitment materials and provides feedback on trial design, helping ensure the research stays connected to the lived experience of people managing T1D. 

“Participating in research, whether in a trial or as an advisor, is hugely rewarding. With my experience as trial participant, I can see how the plans on paper would impact the real lives of people living with diabetes,” explains McArthur.  

Source: SickKids News

Categories : Mental Health PaediatricsTags :

Catch-up Sleep on the Weekend Can Improve Teens’ Anxiety

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Photo by Eren Li

A new study presented at the SLEEP 2025 annual meeting found that teens who get moderate, but not excessive, catch-up sleep on weekends have fewer symptoms of anxiety symptoms.

Results show that teens who got up to two more hours of sleep on weekends than on weekdays exhibited fewer anxiety symptoms compared with those who did not sleep longer on weekends. However, longer durations of catch-up sleep on weekends were associated with slightly more internalising symptoms.

“The results show that both sleeping less on weekends than weekdays and sleeping substantially more on weekends were associated with higher anxiety symptoms,” said lead author Sojeong Kim, a doctoral candidate in the department of clinical psychology and psychology graduate advisor at the University of Oregon in Eugene. “In contrast, moderate catch-up sleep – defined as less than two hours – was associated with lower anxiety symptoms, suggesting that some weekend recovery sleep may be beneficial.”

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teenagers 13 to 18 years of age should sleep 8 to 10 hours on a regular basis to promote optimal health. However, CDC data show that only 23% of high school students get sufficient sleep on an average school night.

“Many teens try to make up for lost sleep by sleeping in on weekends,” Kim said.

Consistently getting sufficient sleep is associated with better health outcomes including improved attention, behavior, learning, memory, emotional regulation, quality of life, and mental and physical health. In contrast, insufficient sleep in teenagers is associated with increased risks of problems such as depression and suicidal thoughts.

The study involved 1877 adolescents with a mean age of 13.5 years. Sleep duration was estimated using Fitbit devices, while internalising symptoms were assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist survey. Weekend catch-up sleep was calculated as the difference between weekend and weekday sleep duration.

Kim noted that it is important to identify the right amount of catch-up sleep that is beneficial to teens who restrict their sleep during the week.

“Too little or too much sleep variability from weekday to weekend may contribute to the symptoms someone is trying to combat, like physical or mental fatigue and feelings of anxiety,” she said.

Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine

Categories : Dermatology PaediatricsTags :

Burning for Beauty: How TikTok Skin Trends Are Harming Young Girls

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It turns out when teens on TikTok say, “Get ready with me,” it can be more harmful than they might realise.

Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash

In the first peer-reviewed study to examine the potential risks and benefits of teen skin-care routines posted on social media, scientists at Northwestern Medicine found girls ages 7 to 18 are using an average of six different products on their faces, with some girls using more than a dozen products. These products tend to be marketed heavily to younger consumers and carry a high risk of skin irritation and allergy, the study found.

The findings are published in the journal Pediatrics.

Each teen daily skin-care regimen costs an average of $168 (which the authors estimate typically lasts a month depending on the size of the products), with some costing more than $500, the study found. As the summer nears, the study authors cautioned that only 26% of daytime skin care regimens included sunscreen – arguably the most important skin care product for any age range, but particularly for kids.

The top-viewed videos contained an average of 11 potentially irritating active ingredients, the study found, putting the content creators at risk of developing skin irritation, sun sensitivity and a skin allergy known as allergic contact dermatitis. Prior evidence has shown that developing such an allergy can limit the kinds of soaps, shampoos and cosmetics users can apply for the rest of their lives.

“That high risk of irritation came from both using multiple active ingredients at the same time, such as hydroxy acids, as well as applying the same active ingredient unknowingly over and over again when that active ingredient was found in three, four, five different products,” said corresponding author Dr. Molly Hales, a postdoctoral research fellow and board-certified dermatologist in the department of dermatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

For example, in one video included in the study, the content creator applied 10 products on her face in six minutes.

“As she’s applying the products, she begins to express discomfort and burning, and in the final few minutes, she develops a visible skin reaction,” said senior author Dr. Tara Lagu, adjunct lecturer of medicine and medical social sciences at Feinberg and a former Northwestern Medicine hospitalist.

Videos ‘emphasized lighter, brighter skin’

“We saw that there was preferential, encoded racial language in some cases that really emphasized lighter, brighter skin,” Lagu said. “I think there also were real associations between use of these regimens and consumerism.”

These videos offer little to no benefit for the pediatric populations they’re targeting, the study authors concluded. What’s more, given how the algorithms work, it’s nearly impossible for parents or pediatricians to track exactly what children or adolescents are viewing. Lastly, there are dangers beyond skin damage, Hales said.

“It’s problematic to show girls devoting this much time and attention to their skin,” Hales said. “We’re setting a very high standard for these girls. The pursuit of health has become a kind of virtue in our society, but the ideal of ‘health’ is also very wrapped up in ideals of beauty, thinness and whiteness. The insidious thing about ‘skin care’ is that it claims to be about health.”

Studying teens in the TikTok environment

In the study, Hales and another researcher each created a new TikTok account, reporting themselves to be 13 years old. The “For You” tab was used to view relevant content until 100 unique videos were compiled. They collected demographics of content creators, number and types of products used and total cost of regimens and then created a list of products used and their active and inactive ingredients. The Pediatric Baseline Series used in patch testing was used to identify ingredients with elevated risk of inducing allergic contact dermatitis.

Source: Northwestern University

Categories : PaediatricsTags :

Singing to Babies Improves Their Mood

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Photo by William Fortunato on Pexels

Around the world and across cultures, singing to babies seems to come instinctively to caregivers. Now, new findings published in Child Development support that singing is an easy, safe, and free way to help improve the mental well-being of infants. Because improved mood in infancy is associated with a greater quality of life for both parents and babies, this in turn has benefits for the health of the entire family, the researchers say. The study also helps explain why musical behaviours may have evolved in parents.

“Singing is something that anyone can do, and most families are already doing,” says Eun Cho, DMA, postdoctoral researcher at the Yale Child Study Center, and co-first author of the study. “We show that this simple practice can lead to real health benefits for babies.”

“We don’t always need to be focusing on expensive, complicated interventions when there are others that are just as effective and easy to adopt,” adds Lidya Yurdum, a PhD student in psychology at the University of Amsterdam, affiliated with the Child Study Center, and co-first author.

Increased singing improves infants’ moods

The new study included 110 parents and their babies, most of whom were under the age of 4 months. The researchers randomly assigned the parents into two groups, encouraging one group to sing to their infants more frequently by teaching the parents new songs, providing karaoke-style instructional videos and infant-friendly songbooks, and sending weekly newsletters offering ideas for incorporating music into daily routines.

For four weeks, these parents received surveys on their smartphones at random times throughout the day. Parents answered questions related to infant mood, fussiness, time spent soothing, caregiver mood, and frequency of musical behavior. For instance, parents were asked to rate how positive or negative their baby’s mood was within the last two to three hours before receiving the survey. The 56 parents in the control group also received an identical intervention in the four weeks following the initial experiment.

The researchers found that parents were successfully able to increase the amount of time they spent singing to their babies. “When you ask parents to sing more and provide them with very basic tools to help them in that journey, it’s something that comes very naturally to them,” says Yurdum.

Not only did the parents sing more frequently, but they also chose to use music especially in one context in particular: calming their infants when they were fussy. “We didn’t say to parents, ‘We think you should sing to your baby when she’s fussy,’ but that’s what they did,” says Samuel Mehr, EdD, an adjunct associate professor at the Child Study Center, and director of The Music Lab. Mehr is also the study’s principal investigator. “Parents intuitively gravitate toward music as a tool for managing infants’ emotions, because they quickly learn how effective singing is at calming a fussy baby.”

Most surprisingly, the responses to the survey showed that increased singing led to a measurable improvement in infants’ moods overall, compared to those in the control group – in other words, parents who sang more rated their babies’ moods as significantly higher. Importantly, improved mood was found in general, not just as an immediate response to music.

While singing did not significantly impact caregivers’ moods in this study, Mehr believes that there could be follow-on effects on health in young families. “Every parent knows that the mood of an infant affects everyone around that infant,” says Mehr. “If improvements to infant mood persist over time, they may well generalize to other health outcomes.”

Follow-up study to further explore singing’s benefits

The team believes that the benefits of singing may be even stronger than the current study shows. “Even before our intervention, these participating families were particularly musical,” Yurdum explains. “Despite that, and despite only four weeks of the intervention, we saw benefits. That suggests that the strength of singing to your babies would likely be even stronger in a family that does not already rely on music as a way of soothing their infants.”

The Child Study Center researchers are currently enrolling parents and babies under 4 months old in a follow-up study, “Together We Grow,” which will investigate the impact of infant-directed singing over an eight-month period.

Although the researchers did not see an improvement in caregiver mood within four weeks, they are intrigued to see if singing can help alleviate stress or conditions such as postpartum depression in the long term. They are also interested in exploring whether singing might have benefits beyond mood in infants, such as improved sleep.

Previous work from The Music Lab has shown that infant-directed music is universal in humans, and that humans can even infer context of songs – such as whether it is for dancing or a lullaby – in foreign languages and from other cultures. For Mehr, the new findings make sense in light of these basic science results. “Our understanding of the evolutionary functions of music points to a role of music in communication,” says Mehr. “Parents send babies a clear signal in their lullabies: I’m close by, I hear you, I’m looking out for you – so things can’t be all that bad.”

The babies, apparently, are listening.

Source: Yale University