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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...

An antibiotic-resistant type of Gram-negative bacteria is infecting an increasing number of children in the US, researchers report in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

These findings come at a time when the issue of drug-resistant bacteria is at the forefront of public health concerns. In late 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a report that provided the first snapshot of the toll and threat such «superbugs» pose to US health.

In that report, the CDC cited use of antibiotics as the single biggest cause of drug-resistant bacteria, sugges...

Results of a European study to be presented at an international conference this week have revealed that a low intake of protein during infancy can reduce a child’s risk of becoming obese by the time they go to school.

The paper «Lower protein content in infant formula reduces BMI and obesity risk at school age» is now published on-line on the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (AJCN) and the print publication later this month and was presented at the international ‘The Power of Programming’ Conference at LMU in Munich 13-15 March 2014).

The research has been supported within the EC f...

Increased adiposity is likely to cause reduced physical activity in children, according to research published in this week’s PLOS Medicine. The results of the study, conducted by Rebecca Richmond and colleagues from the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit at the University of Bristol, UK, suggest that promoting weight loss in overweight and obese children might also increase childhood activity levels.

Previous studies have shown an association between low physical activity and higher body mass index (BMI) in children but were not able to determine whether childhood adiposity influences physical...

Researchers from the Universitat Politècnica de València, the Hospital General de Valencia and the Ophthalmology Unit of the Foundation for the Health and Biomedical Research of the Comunitat Valenciana (FISABIO-Oftalmología Médica) have developed a new software to aid cardiovascular risk diagnosis based on fundus image processing. The Paediatrics Unit of the Hospital General de Valencia has incorporated this software in a study of cardiovascular characteristics.

The application makes it easier to measure the vessels and it allows clinical staff to have more uniform information...

A University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher has detected a higher rate of seizures among children with autism who were fed infant formula containing soy protein rather than milk protein.

The study found excess seizures among girls and in the total sample of 1,949 children. The soy-seizure link reached borderline significance among boys, who comprised 87 percent of the children described in the database under study.

Seizures — caused by uncontrolled electrical currents in the brain — occur in many neurological disorders includingepilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, Down syndrome and autism.

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Research published today shows that schools providing clean water report fewer children off sick. It is the first study to investigate whether providing drinking water in schools can reduce absenteeism.

Researchers looked at absentee rates in eight schools in Cambodia — half of which received treated drinking water, and half of which did not. The 26-week study period spanned two terms — one in the country’s dry season and one in the wet season. The absentee records of 3520 children were taken into account.

They found that during the dry period, children without access to clean water were about...