The study, led by Holly Kramer, MD, MPH, and Ramon Durazo-Arvizu, PhD, is published online ahead of print in the Journal of Pediatric Endocrinology and Metabolism.

New Institute of Medicine guidelines say most people get sufficient vitamin D when their blood levels are at or above 20 nanograms per milliliter (ng/mL). The Pediatric Endocrine Society has a similar guideline. However, other guidelines recommend vitamin D levels above 30 ng/mL.

Loyola researchers studied vitamin D data from a nationally representative sample of 2,877 U.S...

Parents are strong influences in the lives of young children, with patterns of behaviour established in the early years laying the foundation for future choices. A new study suggests that, when it comes to levels of physical activity, it is mothers who set (or don’t set) the pace.

An analysis of the physical activity levels of more than 500 mothers and pre-schoolers, assessed using activity monitors to produce accurate data, found that the amount of activity that a mother and her child did each day was closely related...

The study will be published in the March 27 online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The researchers — Eric Courchesne, PhD, professor of neurosciences and director of the Autism Center of Excellence at UC San Diego, Ed S. Lein, PhD, of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, and first author Rich Stoner, PhD, of the UC San Diego Autism Center of Excellence — analyzed 25 genes in post-mortem brain tissue of children with and without autism...

Childhood abuse or neglect could take a lasting toll on physical health, a new study suggests.

It found that child maltreatment may trigger long-term hormone problems that increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and other health problems in adulthood.

Researchers examined levels of weight-regulating hormones in 95 adults, aged 35 to 65, who suffered physical, emotional or sexual abuse or neglect as children. They were grouped according to the severity of abuse and neglect.

Three hormones were examined in the study. Leptin is involved in appetite regulation and is linked to fat levels...

Habitually playing violent video games appears to increase aggression in children, regardless of parental involvement and other factors.

More than 90 percent of American youths play video games, and many of these games depict violence, which is often portrayed as fun, justified and without negative consequences.

The authors tracked children and adolescents in Singapore over three years on self-reported measures of gaming habits, aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition (AC, such as aggressive fantasies, beliefs about aggression, and attaching motives of hostility to ambiguous provocations) an...

Most head lice found in North America now carry a gene mutation that makes them resistant to standard over-the-counter treatments, a new study cautions.

Head lice infestation is a major public-health issue, the researchers said, with roughly 10 percent of all American school-aged children missing school due to the intense itching and secondary infections that signal exposure.

The problem: Years of relentless exposure to a single treatment option has given rise to a surviving head lice population that is armed with what geneticists call «knockdown resistance,» in the form of the TI genetic muta...

Young children who sleep less eat more, which can lead to obesity and related health problems later in life, reports a new study by UCL researchers.

The study found that 16 month-old children who slept for less than 10 hours each day consumed on average 105kcal more per day than children who slept for more than 13 hours. This is an increase of around 10% from 982kcal to 1087kcal.

Associations between eating, weight and sleep have been reported previously in older children and adults, but the study, published in the International Journal of Obesity, is the first to directly link sleep to ene...

Eating snacks high in salt may speed up cell aging in overweight teenagers, Counsel and Heal reported.

In a new study, researchers from the Medical College of Georgia sought to analyze the relationship between high sodium intake and telomere length.  Telomeres are the protective caps covering the ends of chromosomes, and they naturally shorten over time as people age.  However, harmful lifestyle habits – such as smoking and lack of exercise – can expedite the shortening of telomeres, ultimately speeding up the aging process.

The researchers recruited 766 people between the ages of 14 and...

Scientists have presented the most conclusive evidence yet that genes play a significant role in parenting.

A study by two Michigan State University psychologists refutes the popular theory that how adults parent their children is strictly a function of the way they were themselves parented when they were children.

While environmental factors do play a role in parenting, so do a person’s genes, said S. Alexandra Burt, associate professor of psychology and co-author of a study led by doctoral student Ashlea M. Klahr.

«The way we parent is not solely a function of the way we were parented as chi...

The new study by the University of Warwick and Ruhr-University Bochum, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, sought to understand the relationship between preterm birth and dyscalculia.

Dyscalculia, a learning disorder which involves frequent problems with everyday arithmetic tasks, is diagnosed when children do worse in maths than would be expected based on their general intelligence.

Study co-author Professor Dieter Wolke from the University of Warwick explained, «Mathematic impairment is not the same as dyscalculia...