Exposure to industrial chemicals in the womb or early in life can impair brain development but only a handful are controlled to protect children, researchers said on Wednesday.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology has raised an issue to debate over euthanasia for severely disabled newborn infants. The call was made in a submission to an ethical inquiry into increased survival rates of disabled children.
Advances in medicine mean that families and health professionals can be faced with extremely difficult decisions about the care of very premature or seriously ill babies, which may concern:
Infant abuse may be perpetuated between generations by changes in the brain induced by early experience, research shows. A research team found that when baby rhesus monkeys endured high rates of maternal rejection and mild abuse in their first month of life, their brains often produced less serotonin, a chemical that transmits impulses in the brain. Low levels of serotonin are associated with anxiety and depression and impulsive aggression in both humans and monkeys.
An educational intervention program for parents of infants born prematurely that is implemented early in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) can reduce parental stress, depression and anxiety, enhance parent-infant interactions, and reduce hospital length of stay, according to a study led by Dr. Bernadette Melnyk, Dean and Distinguished Foundation Professor in Nursing at Arizona State University College of Nursing & Healthcare Innovation, Phoenix.
Scientists supported by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institutes of Health, report in this week?s New England Journal of Medicine that pregnant women who received non-surgical treatment for their periodontal, or gum, disease did not also significantly lower their risk of delivering a premature or low-birthweight baby.
Infants who die of sudden infant death syndrome have abnormalities in the brainstem, a part of the brain that helps control heart rate, breathing, blood pressure, temperature and arousal, report researchers funded by the National Institutes of Health. The finding is the strongest evidence to date suggesting that innate differences in a specific part of the brain may place some infants at increased risk for SIDS.
Madonna has said she may adopt another child from abroad following her proposed adoption of a one-year-old baby boy, David Banda, from Malawi.
Julie Jumonville and Elizabeth Smith, co-founders of Milkscreen, Inc. announce the launch of their new product Milkscreen?, available nationwide beginning October, 2006. The two-minute test analyzes breast milk for the presence of alcohol and provides mothers with a clear positive or negative reading.
This is a petition to urge the Transportation Security Administration to consider breast milk to be a life sustaining and supporting body fluid for babies. This means that mothers would be allowed to carry pumped breast milk in the cabin of airplanes in any amount whether traveling with or without their infants.