Mom’s Blog

Fetal Immune System not so naive after all.

When a Pregnant mother receives her recommended Flu vaccine, she’s not the only one whose Immune System gears up to battle the virus. Her fetus can also mount an immune response against the Flu, say researchers in the United States.

The finding runs contrary to the stereotypical view of the fetal Immune System. For more than 50 years, this has been thought of as at best wimpy, capable of some basic, general responses but not the elegant, finely targeted defences found in adults.

But allergy researcher Rachel Miller of Columbia University, New York, and her colleagues found that about a third of babies born of vaccinated mothers were equipped with cells tailor-made to fight off the Flu virus.

“This indicates that the baby’s got a pretty well-developed immune system by the time it’s born,” says immunologist William Burlingham of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Posted on October 6th, 2007 by Dee
Filed under: In The News, Pregnancy & Birth | No Comments »

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning pharmaceutical manufacturers, suppliers, drug repackers, and health professionals who compound medications to be especially vigilant in assuring that Glycerin, a sweetener commonly used worldwide in liquid over-the-counter and prescription drug products, is not contaminated with diethylene glycol (DEG).

DEG is a known poison used in antifreeze and as a solvent. Today, the agency is issuing guidance to industry recommending methods of testing Glycerin and other controls to identify any contamination with DEG before use in the manufacture or preparation of pharmaceutical products.

At the present time, FDA has no reason to believe that the U.S. supply of Glycerin is contaminated with DEG, though the agency is cognizant of reports from other countries over the past several years in which DEG-contaminated glycerin has caused human deaths. FDA is emphasizing the importance of testing glycerin for DEG due to the serious nature of this potentially fatal problem in combination with the global nature of the pharmaceutical supply chain and problems that continue to occur with this kind of contamination in some parts of the global supply of glycerin.

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Posted on May 8th, 2007 by Dee
Filed under: In The News | No Comments »

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — Scientists now say a third of infant deaths are due to premature births — a much larger percentage than previously thought.

In the past, “preterm birth” has been the listed cause of death in fewer than 20 percent of Newborn fatalities. But that number should be 34 percent or more, said researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

That’s because at least a dozen causes of Newborn death are actually problems that go hand-in-hand with premature births, such as respiratory distress syndrome caused by underdeveloped lungs.

“This brings preterm birth, as a cause of death, to the kind of level that we think it deserves,” said the CDC’s Dr. Bill Callaghan, the lead author of a study appearing Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The revised statistic may lead to greater efforts to counsel Pregnant women about taking care of themselves and avoiding actions that can lead to preterm births — such as smoking and drug use.

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Posted on October 7th, 2006 by Dee
Filed under: In The News, Infant, Toddler Health, Pregnancy & Birth | No Comments »

When students at a Lynnwood alternative high school thought administrators were cracking down on hugging recently, they launched a petition drive.

Within a day, they’d gathered signatures from 80 of the school’s 250 students insisting on their right to hug.

Turns out there was no ban, just concern about some hallway hugging the principal said went on too long.

But the students’ sharp sense of injustice suggests just how much hugging has come to mean to adolescents. From middle school to high school, from athletes to band geeks, students are throwing their arms around each other. The hug, a greeting once reserved for young children and out-of-town relatives, is how teenagers now say hello and goodbye.

“Boys are hugging boys. Girls are hugging girls. Girls are hugging boys. They’re a hugging generation,” said Joyce Stewart, principal of Evergreen Middle School in Everett.

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Posted on June 22nd, 2006 by Dee
Filed under: In The News | No Comments »

WASHINGTON (AP) — One mother stopped watching “ER” reruns when her preschooler tried to give her little brother CPR. Another mom laughed that her 15-month-old sang the McDonald’s jingle — “ba, ba, boppa, ba” — every time they drove past the golden arches.

One-third of the nation’s youngest children — babies through age 6 — live in homes where the television is on almost all the time, says a study that highlights the immense disconnect between what pediatricians advise and what parents allow.

TV in the bedroom is not even that rare for the youngest children anymore. Almost one child in five under 2 has a set, even though the American Academy of Pediatrics advises against any TV watching at that age.

Eight in 10 children younger than 6 watch TV, play video games or use the computer on a typical day. They average about two hours of screen time, compared with 48 minutes when they are being read to, the Kaiser Family Foundation concludes in a study released Wednesday.

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Posted on May 26th, 2006 by Dee
Filed under: In The News, Parenting Skills | No Comments »