Children

INTRODUCTION: The immediate response to the Covid-19 pandemic saw school closures and a shift in provision to online health services for children and young people experiencing mental health concerns. This study provides mental health and referral services with an insight into difficulties experienced as well as recommendations on potential improvements. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews with 11 parents and six young people. Reflexive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data...

INTRODUCTION: Noise exposure during pregnancy may affect a child's auditory system, which may disturb fetal learning and language development. We examined the impact of occupational noise exposure during pregnancy on children's language acquisition at the age of one. METHODS: A cohort study was conducted among women working in the food industry, as kindergarten teachers, musicians, dental nurses, or pharmacists who had a child aged <1 year. The analyses covered 408 mother-child pairs...

BACKGROUND: Contraception is an important public health initiative for addressing maternal health outcomes associated with unplanned pregnancies, unsafe abortions and maternal deaths. Although contraceptive use has been on the rise globally, the observed increases in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are sub-optimal and vary among countries. In Zambia, drivers of contraceptive use transition are not well documented. Thus, this study examined the drivers of contraceptive use change among sexually active women in Zambia between 1992 and 2018...

System Thinking is an actual construct supported by several scientific evidence that offer a perspective on how phenomena relate. Rhythm methodology, teaching-learning, and enjoyment in physical education are the main system elements we hypothesize interacting closely to determine direct or mediated effects on motor creativity and rhythmic perceptive capacity. Seventy-six elementary and middle school students (8.9 ± 2.1 years) were randomly assigned to two groups: a) an intervention group that received a physical education lesson based on rhythmic methodology and b) a control group that received conventional lessons without specific rhythmic interventions...

BACKGROUND: Prompt access to evidence-based treatment for children and young people with eating disorders is important for outcomes, yet the gap in service provision remains pervasive. Record levels of young people are waiting for eating disorder treatment and access to care is limited. Guided self-help interventions that are brief and require minimal clinician support have the potential to meet the unprecedented demand for treatment quickly and effectively. OBJECTIVE: To examine the feasibility, acceptability and proof of concept of a novel, CBT guided self-help intervention for children and young people with threshold and subthreshold eating disorders...

BACKGROUND: A large proportion of United States (U.S.) youth play basketball, baseball, softball, or T-ball. Each of the activities poses a documented risk of craniofacial and neck injuries. However, few studies have assessed the national prevalence of pediatric craniofacial and neck injuries in this population, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: The National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS) dataset was used to identify pediatric craniofacial and neck injuries associated with basketball, baseball, softball, or T-ball from 2003-2022 in a cross-sectional study...

BACKGROUND: Centralization of cancer care increases survival but increases the travel burden (i.e., travel durations, distances, and expenditures) in visiting hospitals. This study investigated the travel burdens to access cancer care for children aged 18 years and younger in Japan. METHODS: The study population comprised 10,709 patients diagnosed between 2016 and 2019 obtained from a national population-based cancer registry in Japan. Their residences were classified as urban or rural...

This study explored the effectiveness of digital story interventions in improving early math skills in kindergarten children with mild intellectual disabilities. Digital stories are multimedia narratives that combine text, images, and audio to enhance learning experience. This experimental study used a pretest-posttest control group design. The intervention group consisted of 15 children who participated in an 8-week digital story intervention targeting early math skills. A matched control group was used to control for sex differences...

OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence and associated factors of Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome (PFPS) in children and adolescents. METHOD: A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted with children and adolescents aged 10 to 18 years, who presented a history of peripatellar and/or retropatellar pain, attending elementary or high school in urban public schools in Natal, Brazil. The sample size was calculated based on a minimum outcome prevalence of 22%. RESULTS: A prevalence of 24...

Childfree adults neither have nor want children, but estimates of their prevalence vary widely, leading to ambiguity about how common this family status actually is. The goal of this study is to examine the effects of sample composition, time, and question wording on estimates of the prevalence of childfree adults. We pool 83 nationally representative estimates of the prevalence of childfree adults in Japan since 2000 using meta-regression to identify the influence of sex, marital status, year, and survey question...

Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune disease that arises because of self-destruction of circulating platelets. The mechanism remains complicated and lacks a standard clinical treatment. Current first-line and second-line medications for ITP have shown limited effectiveness, necessitating the exploration of new therapeutic options. Sirolimus is a mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor that has been demonstrated to inhibit lymphocyte activity, indicating potential for SRL in the treatment of ITP...

Stress in parents has a significant impact on parenting and infant's development. However, few studies have examined cross-sectional and longitudinal links on risk and resilience of burdened families. Thus, this study aimed to investigate subjective risk and resilience factors on family well-being. Data stem from the 2015 nationwide study "Children in Germany" ("Kinder in Deutschland" - KiD 0-3). Parents of children aged zero to 3 years (N = 8.063) were recruited from random probability-sampled paediatric clinics (n = 271) across Germany...

BACKGROUND: Physical activity promotes healthy physical and mental development in children with leukemia. However, the level of physical activity in hospitalized children with leukemia and the factors that influence it are unknown. OBJECTIVES: The aims of this study were to understand the physical activity level of hospitalized children with leukemia and to explore the factors influencing it to provide a reference for physical activity assessment and intervention in such children...

Interpersonal communication facilitates symptom measures of autistic sociability to enhance clinical decision-making in identifying children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Traditional methods are carried out by clinical practitioners with assessment scales, which are subjective to quantify. Recent studies employ engineering technologies to analyze children's behaviors with quantitative indicators, but these methods only generate specific rule-driven indicators that are not adaptable to diverse interaction scenarios...

Lead poisoning is globally concerning, yet limited testing hinders effective interventions in most countries. We aimed to create annual maps of county-specific blood lead levels in China from 1980 to 2040 using a machine learning model. Blood lead data from China were sourced from 1180 surveys published between 1980 and 2022. Additionally, regional statistical figures for 15 natural and socioeconomic variables were obtained or estimated as predictors. A machine learning model, using the random forest algorithm and 2973 generated samples, was created to predict county-specific blood lead levels in China from 1980 to 2040...

BACKGROUND: The incidence of stroke in children is low, and pediatric stroke rehabilitation services are less developed than adult ones. Survivors of pediatric stroke have a long poststroke life expectancy and therefore have the potential to experience impairments from their stroke for many years. However, there are relatively few studies characterizing these impairments and what factors facilitate or counteract recovery. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to characterize the main barriers to and facilitators of recovery from pediatric stroke...

We studied the effects of mother-infant interaction and maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress on children's social-emotional problems and competences, as well as whether interaction quality moderates the association between distress and children's outcomes. Maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress were measured using the SCL and EPDS questionnaires, whereas mother-infant interaction was measured when the child was 8 months old using the EA Scales. Children's social-emotional development was measured using the BITSEA questionnaire at 2 years old and using the SDQ questionnaire at 4 years old, where higher maternal structuring was associated with fewer social-emotional problems in children and higher maternal sensitivity was associated with greater social-emotional competence in children at 2 years old...

Ewing sarcoma (ES) is the second most common primary malignant bone tumour in children and adolescents. About 14.5% of primary malignancies develop in pelvic bones, where they typically have worse prognoses than extremity or acral sarcomas. It usually presents with aggressive features on radiology scans, but may also present with different radiological characteristics. In this series, we describe rare appearances of pelvic skeletal Ewing sarcoma, with large extraosseous cystic component on imaging, defined by the presence of fluid-filled spaces in the extraosseous tumour lesion, which distinguishes it from the solid nature of conventional ES...

PURPOSE: To evaluate the proximal caries progression in primary molars using the radiographic International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS). METHODS: A study was conducted on 196 children aged 3-9 years old who underwent the clinical examination and bitewing radiography during baseline and 6-month (and over) follow-up visits. The primary molars bitewing radiographs with initial enamel caries (RA1 and RA2) or outer dentine caries (RA3) of proximal surfaces were included...

PURPOSE: The impact of well-crafted IEP goals on student outcomes is well-documented, but creating high-quality goals can be a challenging task for many special education teachers. This study aims to investigate potential effectiveness of using ChatGPT, an AI technology, in supporting development of high-quality, individualized IEP goals for preschool children with autism. METHODS: Thirty special education teachers working with preschool children with autism were randomly assigned to either the ChatGPT or control groups...