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4A Daily News – Tuesday, May 21, 2013 Vitality health & fitness Drugs don't affect children's recovery By Trevor Stokes Reuters A review of past research finds that feverreducing drugs have no effect on the speed of children's recovery from an infection, contrary to the fears of some doctors and parents. Researchers have debated for decades whether lowering a sick child's fever helps the recovery process or interferes with the body's ability to fight the infection. Some previous research has shown that giving children feverreducing "antipyretic" medications, such as acetaminophen, after vaccinations interfered with their immune responses to the vaccines, for example. "There's no evidence that antipyretics slow down recovery," said Alison While, a professor of community nursing at King's College London and senior author of the new study. Nevertheless, While and her coauthor caution in their report in the Journal of Pediatrics, their findings don't mean they encourage parents to use the medications at the first sign of fever either. "Many many parents are using antipyretics with small children whenever they get a slightly raised temperature. This is madness," While told Reuters Health. Because of the ongoing debate and the fact that few researchers have examined the health benefits or harms in reducing a fever during illness, While and colleague Edward Purssell combed the literature. They found only six clinical studies that examined the effect of using anti-fever medications on a total of 657 sick children. Three of the studies focused on children infected with malaria Childhood ADHD linked to obesity later in life By Genevra Pittman Reuters Health Reuters photo In this Feb. 16 photo, Carlos Cervantes, 3, is photographed from his bed at Children's Hospital Central California in Madera. This was the third visit for Carlos who was diagnosed with Valley fever. and the rest included fevers that came from chickenpox and other viral infections. Feverish children given anti-fever meds returned to normal body temperature four hours more quickly than those without meds, on average, but all children recovered from their respective infections with equal speed, the researchers found. For While and other health experts, the result not only shows that antipyretics do no harm to recovery time, it also highlights parents' quick willingness to stave off a fever, with little evidence it does any good. "Fever-phobia - this great fear that fever is such a horrible thing for their child" drives the overuse of anti-fever meds by parents, according to Dr. Janice Sullivan, medical director of the Kosair Charities Pediatric Clinical Research Unit at the University of Louisville. Sullivan, who was not involved in the current study, coauthored 2011 American Academy of Pediatrics recommenda- tions to decrease use of anti-fever medicines for children. "The bottom line is this: You never want to give your child a drug that they don't truly need because all drugs, even if you can buy them over the counter, have a potential for side effects," Sullivan told Reuters Health. "They can cause injury to the liver for acetaminophen and to the kidney for ibuprofen; they're not benign drugs," Sullivan said. The deciding factor in giving antipyretics is typically discomfort, Sullivan added. If children are whiny, have aches and joint pain, they may need to be treated, but otherwise, a fever temperature will limit itself and won't require treatment, Sullivan said. She recommended that parents talk with their pediatricians about what symptoms beyond fever should be of concern and may warrant a doctor's visit. For example, a child with a weakened heart won't do well with a fever and could benefit from anti-fever meds. Another expert went further, saying that antifever meds had no place in a medicine cabinet. "A true fever, caused by an infectious agent is never harmful; there's no reason why one should lower the temperature during infection," said Dr. Peter Kremsner, head of the Institute of Tropical Medicine at the University of Tübingen in Germany, and an author of three malaria studies included in the analysis. One common worry among parents is that a high fever could overwhelm a child's body and lead to convulsions. Kremsner said no evidence suggested that convulsions from fever existed. "It is always the infectious disease," he told Reuters Health. Have a news tip? Call 527-2151, Ext. 112 NEW YORK (Reuters Health) — Boys who are diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in elementary school are more likely to grow up to be obese adults than those who don't have the condition, a new study suggests. Researchers surveyed two groups of 41-year-old men and found those with a history of ADHD were 19 pounds heavier than their non-ADHD counterparts, on average. The findings are consistent with past studies that looked only at children or only at adults and linked ADHD to extra pounds, researchers said. "There's definitely been enough research now where it does appear there is some connection between these two disorders," said Sherry Pagoto, who has studied ADHD and obesity at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. Data for the new study came from 207 white boys with ADHD who were referred to a research clinic at around age eight and followed as they grew up. Ten years later another group of teenage boys without ADHD, who were otherwise similar to the original participants, were added to the study. By the time they were asked to report their weight at age 41, 111 men from each group were still in the study. On that survey, men with a history of ADHD reported weighing 213 pounds, on average, and 41 percent of them were obese. In comparison, men without ADHD weighed in at an average of 194 pounds, and 22 percent qualified as obese, Dr. F. Xavier Castellanos from the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York and his colleagues wrote in Pediatrics. "As we learn more about the regions of the brain that may be implicated in obesity, they overlap with brain regions implicated in ADHD," Castellanos told Reuters Health. "The reward system seems to be relevant to both conditions." In addition, he added, "There is the speculation that the obesity is at least partly reflecting some of the impulsivity, poor planning and the difficulty in making choices" that come with ADHD. Pagoto, who was not involved in the new research, agreed that young people with the disorder could be more impulsive when it comes to their food choices and may also spend more time in front of screens than their peers. "Parents of children who have ADHD should pay special attention to how that child's weight is changing over time, knowing that they may be at greater risk for becoming obese," she told Reuters Health. "If they're at higher risk of obesity, that may bring other things with it," such as type 2 diabetes, she added. Contrary to the study team's hypothesis, they found that men who no longer had their childhood ADHD symptoms were especially likely to be obese - not those who still had persistent attention and hyperactivity problems. Pagoto agreed that finding was unexpected and said the study may simply have been too small to tease out reliable differences among adults with a history of ADHD. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, parents report that close to one in ten kids and teenagers has been diagnosed with ADHD. Boys are more than twice as likely to be diagnosed as girls. Castellanos recommended parents of children with ADHD make sure their kids are getting enough exercise and help them cut back on sugary drinks and other high-calorie food choices. 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''There is reasonable cause to believe that the strike would prevent delivery of an essential public service... and therefore constitute a substantial and imminent threat to public health or safety, if all respiratory therapists in the UC Burn Centers and all pharmacists working in UCSF's California Poison Control System were permitted to strike,'' Brown wrote in his ruling. But Brown also said there's no reason why others cannot strike as long as staffing remains at weekend levels for respiratory therapists working in intensive care units for children, clinical lab scientists, hospital radiation physicists and workers at San Francisco General Hospital. Kathryn Lybarger, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said the ruling ''reassures the public that there will be no imminent health and safety risks associated with this week's strike.''