Symptoms of a kidney infection. Left untreated, they can cause blood poisoning, loss of a kidney, or perhaps even death.

Many babies spend almost three hours in front of the TV each day, a new study finds, especially if their mothers are obese and TV addicts themselves, or if the babies are fussy or active.

«Mothers are using television as a way to soothe these infants who might be a little bit more difficult to deal with,» said senior study author Amanda Thompson, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina, in Chapel Hill.

Other studies have shown that TV watching at such an early age can be harmful, she said, adding that TV can delay important developmental milestones.

The report w...

Social practices and cultural beliefs of modern life are preventing healthy brain and emotional development in children, according to an interdisciplinary body of research presented recently at a symposium at the University of Notre Dame.

«Life outcomes for American youth are worsening, especially in comparison to 50 years ago,» says Darcia Narvaez, Notre Dame professor of psychology who specializes in moral development in children and how early life experiences can influence brain development.

«Ill-advised practices and beliefs have become commonplace in our culture, such as the use of infant...

In Chicago, a hospital employee describes the emergency department as «knee-deep in flu and pneumonia cases.»

In Richmond, Va., Dr. Kenneth Lucas of the Patient First clinic says he’s seen a 30 percent rise in flu cases, which «hit the fan around Christmastime» and «really rolled in with the holidays.»

And in Rhode Island, where almost 10 percent of emergency room visits in the past week were due to flu-like symptoms, state Health Department Director Michael Fine predicts this could be the worst flu season in years.

This year’s influenza season got off to an early start, and according to these...

Washington is trying to help hundreds of American families whose dreams of adopting a child from Russia are in limbo after the passage of a controversial Russian law, a top US official said Tuesday.

Calling it «tragic» for the families and children involved, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said some 500 to 1,000 US families already had made progress in their adoption plans before the new ban came into force.

In many cases the families have met with the children they planned to offer a new home in the United States, and already bonded with them.

«We are continuing our conversations...

Most babies who wake up during the night should be allowed to self-soothe and fall back to sleep on their own, researchers say.

«By 6 months of age, most babies sleep through the night, awakening their mothers only about once per week. However, not all children follow this pattern of development,» Marsha Weinraub, a Temple University psychology professor, said in a university news release.

«If you measure them while they are sleeping, all babies — like all adults — move through a sleep cycle every one-and-a-half to two hours where they wake up and then return to sleep...

Here are some characteristics of the middle born child or children.

The middle or second born child or children often have the sense of not belonging. They fight to receive attention from parents and others because they feel many times they are being ignored or dubbed off as being the same as another sibling. Being in the middle a child can feel insecure. The middle child often lacks drive and looks for direction from the first born child. Sometimes a middle child feels out of place because they are not over achievers and like to go with the flow of things.

Being a middle child would mean they...

Routine and inexpensive genetic testing could save a significant number of children from being given drugs that fail to help their asthma and may even make it worse, scientists say.

It is accepted that specific medicines work better on some people than on others. Drug companies are exploring the possibilities for personalised medicines: drugs targeted to an individual’s genetic makeup, which will therefore be much more effective.

But the reverse also holds true: that some drugs are likely to be ineffective and cause more side-effects in some people than in others.

A study, carried out by r...

‘Pregnant women exposed to pollen shortly before birth are more likely to have children with severe asthma,’ is the somewhat alarmist headline in the Daily Mail.

The news is based on a large Swedish study that aimed to investigate the relationship between exposure to pollen during pregnancy and the first few months of a child’s life, and the risk of the child requiring hospitalisation for asthma in the first year of life.

The researchers found that high pollen exposure during the last trimester of a mother’s pregnancy was associated with an increased risk of the child being admitted to hospi...

Looking at how kids’ brains responded while viewing «Sesame Street» videos, researchers found that the more kids’ brains acted like those of adults, the better they performed on tests.

The findings may seem obvious. Why wouldn’t kids with adult-like brains score better on tests? But study lead author Jessica Cantlon said there’s more to the research.

«It’s a step in the direction toward understanding what typical brain development looks like and predicting what might be going wrong,» said Cantlon, an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Roc...