Flu vaccination rates among U.S. children were lower than expected over a recent five-year period, a new study reports.

The findings were released in the midst of the current flu season, with 47 states now reporting widespread illness, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health officials recommend that all children 6 months and older get the flu vaccine.

For the new study, Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center researchers reviewed data on more than 8,000 children younger than 5 in three counties in Ohio, New York and Tennessee between 2004 and 2009, and found that le...

“Fast food and takeaways linked to surge in child asthma and allergies,” reports The Guardian.

Along with many other papers, it reports on a study attempting to shed light on one of the enduring medical mysteries of recent times – what explains the sharp rise in allergic conditions that has occurred during the past few decades?

Researchers wanted to investigate the theory that changes to traditional diets in the developed world since World War Two may be partially responsible.

This was an international survey looking at the links between diet and three allergy-related conditions in adole...

Although still rare, the extremely serious disease known as Eastern equine encephalitis may be affecting more people than before.

In a recent review of two epidemics of Eastern equine encephalitis since the mid-2000s, researchers found 15 cases of the mosquito-borne illness among children in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Normally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention records about five to 10 cases a year nationwide.

«This virus is rare, but it’s among the world’s most dangerous viruses, and it’s in your own backyard,» said lead review author Dr...

«Children can ‘grow out of’ autism, psychologists say, challenging the established view that autism is a permanent, incurable condition,» The Independent has reported.

The story is based on a study that documented a group of individuals with an early history of diagnosed autism. These individuals no longer met the criteria for this diagnosis in later life and seemed to function normally.

The study compared the functioning of this group with a group consisting of people with high functioning autism (often referred to as Asperger syndrome) and a second group of people who were developing or ha...

Children are growing up in a sea of radiofrequency radiation that has never existed in human history. In America today, about twenty million children under the age of fourteen have cellphones. Increasingly, scientists and policy makers in tech-savvy nations like Israel and Finland are concerned that the ways these devices are used imperil the brain. The iPhone plastic baby rattle case protects the phone’s glass screen from cracking when chomped on by teething babies, but does not protect the infant’s young brain from the phone’s pulsed digital microwave radiation.

This proliferation of ...

«A new study has found that women who undergo IVF have a higher risk of experiencing blood clots and pulmonary embolism while they are pregnant,» ITV News has reported.

These findings come from a Swedish study that looked at over 20,000 women who gave birth after conceiving through IVF, and compared them to over 100,000 similarly aged women who gave birth at around the same time having conceived naturally. It found that blood clots in the veins and in the lungs were more common during pregnancy in women who had conceived through IVF, particularly in the first trimester.

The chances of getting ...

Obese children — already known to be at higher risk for heart disease and other ills in adulthood — may also experience more immediate problems, including asthma, learning disabilities and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to a new study.

«Childhood obesity not only has long-term impact in terms of future heart disease, diabetes and other problems that we have been hearing so many things about,» said study author Dr. Neal Halfon, director of the Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities at the University of California, Los Angeles.

«It also has an immediate impa...

Doctors need to ask — and parents need to tell. That’s the upshot of a new study showing a distressing number of Canadians aren’t telling their physician, or pharmacist, when treating their kids with both alternative and conventional medicines. That’s a combination that carries potential risk to patients, especially the very young.

A variety of possible interactions can result when blending standard prescription drugs with alternative medicine, especially herbal remedies...

I have often wondered how many people make New Year’s resolutions about eating more healthfully. It has to be a huge number, right?

And how many of those people fall short of their ambitious goals? They start off robust, but after a few weeks, life gets in the way, old habits stake their place and the resolution to keep a resolution fades.

We all know that any significant, lasting change takes time. I believe it takes at least a year, if not two, to transform the way a person or a family eats...

Denise Adams, Ph.D., from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and colleagues surveyed parents to examine the prevalence and patterns of CAM use in subspecialty clinics at one children’s hospital in western Canada (Edmonton) and one in central Canada (Ottawa).

The researchers found that CAM use was significantly higher at the western hospital (71 percent) than the central hospital (42 percent), despite similar demographic characteristics of the two populations. The majority of parents agreed or strongly agreed that they felt comfortable discussing use of CAM in their clinic...