How much does breastfeeding cost? How much money can be saved? In today’s health reform climate, it’s always about the bottom line. So for those of us who have for years championed breastfeeding as one of the best choices moms can make for the health of their children, a new study by Dr. Melissa Bartick and Arnold Reinhold in this week’s journal Pediatrics provides the financial data to support the choice to breastfeed exclusively for at least the first six months of a child’s life.
Kids’ vaccines are making holiday visits less infectious. California has turned up 10 autism clusters in neighborhoods with high concentrations of white, highly educated parents. Abused children are much more likely to develop migraines as adults. When it comes to math skills, gender differences are hard to find.
It’s a sad fact that congenital heart disease, the most common group of birth defects, affects 35,000 to 40,000 U.S. infants born annually. Currently, most congenital heart defects have no known cause.
But researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston and Brigham and Women’s Hospital hope to change that. They were recently awarded a large, 6-year grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to probe the genetic causes of congenital heart disease. The $4.19 million grant is part of the Pediatric Cardiac Genomics Consortium (PCGC), which seeks to identify genetic and epigenetic causes of human congenital heart disease and to ultimately find preventive strategies, targets for treatment, and better diagnostic and prognostic information for families.
Although a few genetic causes of congenital heart disease are already known, the researchers hope to zero in on novel, undiscovered genes. Because gene discovery research requires a high number of patient samples, a collaborative consortium such as the PCGC will aid research by allowing scientists to share patient samples, data and technology.
Editor’s note: This week and next, we will be doing a series on how kids can give back to other kids.One huge way kids are giving back to kids is by taking part in medical research studies. If you’re a research subject, or the parent of one, you already know that you’re mainly helping not yourself, but generations of kids to come — so that researchers can better understand the disease and find new and better treatments. In this video, the first of several posts about children in medical research, kids and parents talk about their experiences volunteering for a study and what they hope to gain. It was shot in Children’s Clinical and Translational Study Unit, our own “research central.”
by Childrens Hospital Boston staff on December 6, 2009
Here’s a quick look at what Thrive was up to last week.
Yoga is thought to have many healing powers, but is fighting eating disorders one of them? One patient tells her story of how brain stimulation helps keep her epileptic seizures at bay. Children’s professionalism and ethical practice expert talks about the changing mammography guidelines and gives insight into the health care reform. Children’s Dr. Sharon Levy discusses whether or not home-based drug kits are useful on the MSNBC show “Dr. Nancy.” The National Institute of Health announced 13 new government-approved embryonic stem cell lines, 11 of which were developed at Children’s. The HealthMap team gave us our weekly H1N1 update. Did you know that children with RSV are more likely to be hospitalized than those with seasonal flu? Our Mediatrician sings his praises of Guitar Hero but adds a warning about appropriate lyrics. Good Morning America features Children’s research on autism and facial recognition.
Kimberly Barbas, BSN, RN, IBCLC, is a lactation specialist at Children’s Hospital Boston’s Lactation Support Program. 
Other stories we’ve been reading:
It’s a sad fact that congenital heart disease, the most common group of birth defects, affects 35,000 to 40,000 U.S. infants born annually. Currently, most congenital heart defects have no known cause.
