12 May 2020
TUESDAY, May 12, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers may have gained new insights into a mystifying condition that causes children's behavior to change so severely and abruptly, it can be like they woke up as a different person.
The condition is known as pediatric acute-onset neuropsychiatric syndrome, or PANS. It is diagnosed when a child has a dramatic -- sometimes overnight -- onset of psychiatric and neurological symptoms.
The primary ones are obsessive-compulsive behaviors and fears over food that cause the child to stop eating. But affected children also have issues ranging from depression and dramatic mood swings, to difficulty with school work, sleep disturbances, bedwetting and behavioral regression -- reverting to preschool temper tantrums and separation anxiety, for...
12 May 2020
TUESDAY, May 12, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Screening to detect potentially deadly heart problems in U.S. college athletes saves lives, researchers say.
And it's also cost-effective. "It can be implemented for much less than the cost of a pair of athletic shoes," said study leader Dr. Kimberly Harmon, of the University of Washington School of Medicine, in Seattle.
Sudden cardiac death is the leading cause of death among U.S. college athletes, so checking these athletes for undiagnosed heart problems as part of a general health screening has increased over recent decades.
An electrocardiogram (EKG) is used to measure the electrical output of a person's heartbeat. EKGs can detect potentially serious heart problems, but critics say they result in too many false-positive findings, leading...
12 May 2020
TUESDAY, May 12, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Hunkering down during the coronavirus pandemic has stressed families and raised the risk for child abuse, Penn State researchers report.
"We're very worried about children becoming more seriously injured over longer periods of time before they can get treatment," said Dr. Lori Frasier, chief of the division of child abuse pediatrics at Penn State Children's Hospital.
Data from ChildLine, part of the Pennsylvania child protective services program, show 30% to 50% fewer reports of child abuse from the three weeks before state-mandated COVID-19 restrictions to the first three weeks after closures.
Yet that's different from what Frasier found.
"Most reports to ChildLine are made by mandated reporters -- teachers, doctors and psychologists,...
12 May 2020
TUESDAY, May 12, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- A cough or other respiratory symptoms aren't the only early signs of COVID-19 in children, according to researchers.
They examined the cases of five children who were admitted to the hospital with digestive tract symptoms and later diagnosed with pneumonia and COVID-19.
Children with sickness and diarrhea who also have a fever or history of exposure to coronavirus should be suspected of having COVID-19, concluded the authors of the study. The findings were published May 12 in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics.
"These children were seeking medical advice in the emergency department for unrelated problems, for example, one had a kidney stone, another a head trauma. All had pneumonia confirmed by chest CT scan before or soon after admission...