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A smartphone application that has potential to help children with autism communicate more effectively is now available for download.

Developed by Keith Allen, Ph.D., professor of pediatrics at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and a child psychologist at UNMC’s Munroe-Meyer Institute, the app uses evidence-based naturalistic teaching procedures to foster communication.

«We wanted to help parents do more to help their children learn basic communication skills...

Hot off the presses, here’s a report from the Government Accountability Office on the state of children’s mental health care. It reveals some major problems.

«Most children whose emotions or behavior, as reported by their parent or guardian, indicated a potential need for a mental health service did not receive any services within the same year,» the GAO wrote.

The report comes after Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Rep. Rosa DeLauro (Conn.), and Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (Calif...

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

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...

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...

Today, mothers of newborns find themselves confronting a common dilemma: Should they let their babies «cry it out» when they wake up at night? Or should they rush to comfort their crying little one?

In fact, waking up in the middle of the night is the most common concern that parents of infants report to pediatricians. Now, a new study from Temple psychology professor Marsha Weinraub gives parents some scientific facts to help with that decision.

The study, published inDevelopmental Psychology, supports the idea that a majority of infants are best left to self-soothe and fall back to sleep on ...

The American Academy of Pediatrics has two New Year’s resolutions for schools: Keep the school nurse and don’t drop recess.

The recommendations are part of two new policy statements published in Pediatrics.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says there’s a growing trend in schools to take away recess and use the time to teach subjects.

«There is pressure on schools to increase performance on standardized testing, and a lot of times teachers are using withdrawal of recess as a punishment for children,» says Robert Murray, MD, a co-author of the recess policy statement and a professor at ...

Brain changes found in adults with certain gene variants linked to conditions including Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and autism can also be spotted in brain scans done on newborns, a new study indicates.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) School of Medicine said these brain changes could open new avenues for research.

«These results suggest that prenatal brain development may be a very important influence on psychiatric risk later in life,» study author Rebecca Knickmeyer, an assistant professor of psychiatry, said in a university news release...