Toddlers learn their first words better from people than from Teletubbies, according to new research at Wake Forest University. Children younger than 22 months may be entertained, but they do not learn words from the television program, said Marina Krcmar, associate professor of communication at Wake Forest and author of the study.
Men and women with multiple sclerosis (MS) equally transmit the genetic risk of the disease to their children, according to a study published June 27, 2007, in the online edition of Neurology?, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
A new genetic test targeting the most common types of muscular dystrophy — those caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene — is far quicker with greater accuracy and sensitivity than existing tests. It can be used to confirm clinical diagnoses, to test female family members who may be carriers, and to perform prenatal testing.
A family-based weight management program developed by researchers at Yale School of Medicine was more effective at reducing weight, body fat, body mass index (BMI) and insulin sensitivity than traditional clinic-based weight counseling.
The increased incidence of chronic conditions among American children predicts serious strains on health care and social welfare systems in the future, caution investigators from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health.
A substantial proportion of childhood cancer survivors experience serious health problems as young adults, particularly those who received radiation treatment, according to a study in the June 27 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on chronic diseases of children.
Non-Hispanic white youth have the highest rate of diabetes of all racial/ethnic groups for children in the U.S., with type 1 being the predominant kind of diabetes among youth, according to a study in the June 27 issue of JAMA, a theme issue on chronic diseases of children.
Researchers at the Picower Institute at MIT have, for the first time, reversed symptoms of mental retardation and autism in mice. The study may lead to new drug therapies for a leading inherited cause of mental retardation (Fragile X Syndrome) and some types of autism.
Physicians have recognized scoliosis, the abnormal curvature of the spine, since the time of Hippocrates, but its causes have remained a mystery — until now. For the first time, researchers have discovered a gene that underlies the condition, which affects about 3 percent of all children.
Researchers in Delft University of Technology?s Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in The Netherlands have cast new light on the workings of the important cancer inhibitor topotecan. Little had been known about the underlying molecular mechanism, but the Delft scientists can now view the effects of the medicine live at the levelin of a single DNA molecule.