LONDON, England (Reuters) — Children who are overweight or obese by the age of 11 are likely to carry their excess weight into adulthood and to suffer from related health problems, researchers said on Friday.

A study by scientists at University College London who tracked nearly 6,000 children in Britain over five years showed about a quarter had a weight problem when they entered secondary school.

“Children who joined the study at age 11 and were already plump did not slim down at all over the five years of follow-up,” said team head Professor Jane Wardle.

The research, published online by the British Medical Journal, suggests that by the age of 11 a tendency to be overweight or obese is already set.

“It looked like obesity at 11 is already persistent obesity, so these things are being set earlier than we had previously thought,” she told Reuters.

Although the findings related to British children, Wardle said there is no reason to suspect that the same phenomenon would not been seen in other countries.

Continue reading " Eleven a Key Age for Obese Children "

By Miranda Hitti
WebMD Medical News

Doctors from the CDC estimate that more than 3,000 people visited hospital emergency departments in 2004 due to side effects from drugs to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

The estimate — made by the CDC’s Adam Cohen, MD, MPH, and colleagues — appears in a letter in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Cohen and colleagues reviewed database records from 64 U.S. hospitals. They counted emergency department visits linked to stimulant drugs widely prescribed for ADHD.

The database showed 81 cases in 2004. From that figure, “we estimate that 3,075 patients presented to emergency departments nationally for adverse events from stimulant drugs prescribed for the treatment of ADHD” in 2004, write Cohen and colleagues.

Their letter doesn’t tie any particular ADHD drug to the cases reported in the database.

Data’s Details

Cohen and colleagues checked the database’s records for Aug. 1, 2003 to Dec. 31, 2005. They found 188 emergency department visits related to ADHD drugs during that time.

Continue reading " ADHD Drugs Tied to ER Visits "

By Serena Gordon
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) — A new review of past studies on the effect that attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) drugs have on children’s growth concludes that the drugs do, in fact, suppress growth to some degree.

While the effect found was statistically significant, one of the study’s authors, Dr. Omar Khwaja, an instructor in neurology at Children’s Hospital Boston, said the average growth suppression for a 10-year-old boy was probably about three-quarters of an inch in height and a little more than two pounds in weight.

“Parents need to know that when children are on stimulant treatment, although they’re probably the best way of treating ADHD, there’s a possibility of growth restriction,” Khwaja said. “Their physicians need to pay attention and monitor growth in these children, and if it falls off of what is expected, think about lowering the dose or changing the dosing schedule.”

Results of the study were presented Monday at the Pediatric Academic Societies annual meeting, in San Francisco.

Continue reading " ADHD Drugs Can Stunt Growth "