Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, JAMA, Pediatrics, Pulmonary Disease / 04.03.2021

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Dott.ssa Silvia Bloise MD Prof. Riccardo Lubrano MD PhD Pediatric and Neonatology Unit Maternal and Child Department Sapienza University of Rome Rome Italy MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Pending new evidence, the universal facial masking, with other preventive measures remain the only strategies to limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection. The use of face mask is particularly debated in the children, especially in younger children. Therefore, we wanted to test whether their in children was associated with episodes of desaturation or respiratory distress. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Education / 18.09.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Thomas M. Selden Director of the Division of Research and Modeling Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Rockville, Maryland  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Across the United States, school districts are facing decisions about whether and how to reopen elementary and secondary schools.  We conducted this study to provide evidence on the risk of severe COVID-19 among adults who are connected to schools in some way – as teachers or other school workers or as household members of school-age children or school employees. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) collects the data we used in this study as part of its longstanding Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), which is the nation’s most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage. (more…)
Author Interviews, COVID -19 Coronavirus, Pediatrics / 22.08.2020

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Lael Yonker, MD Pediatric Pulmonology Director, MGH Cystic Fibrosis Center Principal Investigator, Pediatric COVID biorepository Mucosal Immunology and Biology Research Center Massachusetts General Hospital MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Children were initially felt to be spared from the COVID-19 pandemic. Here, we show that children can become sick from SARS-CoV-2 infection, and even if the initial illness is mild, some go on to develop a severe inflammatory illness after the initial illness. We also show that children can carry very high levels of virus early in the course of infection, suggesting they may play a larger role in spreading the virus than previously thought. (more…)
ADHD, Author Interviews, Depression, Education, JAMA, Mental Health Research, Pediatrics / 25.09.2019

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jeremy Brown BA MSc RESEARCH DEGREE STUDENT IN PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Given the way schools typically work, children in the same year as each other can be almost a whole year apart in terms of age. We’ve known for a while that children who are young in their year at school are also more likely to be diagnosed as having hyperactivity disorders and tend to do less well academically than the older children in the year. They also seem to be at increased risk of suicide. This is thankfully an extremely rare occurrence in children, but there is little evidence about whether younger children are more likely to be diagnosed with depression. We used electronic health records for just over a million children in the UK to see if there was any association between how old the children were in their year and whether they got diagnosed with ADHD, intellectual disability and depression. (more…)
Author Interviews, Ophthalmology, Pediatrics / 14.06.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: multiple choice test takingKrista Kelly, PhD Postdoctoral Fellow Crystal Charity Ball Pediatric Vision Evaluation Center Retina Foundation of the Southwest Dallas, TX 75231 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: We were interested in seeing whether the fine motor deficits typically seen in amblyopia (lazy eye) and strabismus (crossed eyes) translate to an academic setting. Namely, transferring answers to a multiple choice answer form widely used in standardized testing in schools. Children with amblyopia and strabismus took about 28% longer than their peers transferring answers to a multiple choice answer form, even though they have good vision in one or both eyes.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, JAMA, Pediatrics / 20.04.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Children Playing at Swyalana Lagoon” by Doug Hay is licensed under CC BY 2.0Dr Anuja Pandey Population, Policy and Practice Programme, UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health London UK  MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?  Response: Evidence from longitudinal studies suggests that self-regulation skills can be a powerful predictor of positive health, educational, financial and social outcomes. Hence, self-regulation has received interest as an intervention target and a number of interventions have been evaluated in children and adolescents. Our study summarised the evidence from 50 rigorously evaluated self-regulation interventions in children and adolescents including 23098 participants. We found that while most interventions were successful in improving self-regulation (66%), some of them did not produce a noticeable change (34%).Curriculum based approach was most commonly used to deliver interventions, and this involved training teachers, who implemented these interventions.  (more…)
Author Interviews, Education / 27.03.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “Classroom” by frankjuarez is licensed under CC BY 2.0Dr Anna Mazenod Institute of Education University of London UK MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: In this paper we report baseline findings from a large study of grouping practices in state-funded secondary schools in England. The study seeks to improve our understanding of how students are grouped for their English and mathematics classes, and the potential impact of different grouping practices on student outcomes and experiences of schooling. This paper draws on a survey of 597 teachers and 34 teacher interviews in schools where students are grouped by their attainment for the subject. It focuses on teacher perspectives on teaching and learning in the lower attainment groups. We found that students in the lower attainment groups were typically constructed as learners who benefit from specific approaches to learning justified through discourses of nurturing and protection. Most teachers felt that students in the lower attainment groups were not able to access learning independently from their teachers in comparison with their peers in the higher attainment groups. Some teachers for example described students in the lower attainment groups as ‘more dependent on people’ and students in the higher attainment groups as ‘independent learners.’ (more…)
Author Interviews, CDC, Education, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 26.01.2018

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: “He isn't sleeping, he is mad. When we don't get our way pouting always works (okay.. It's worth a try at least!) #kids #dad #father #family #funny #like #parenting #photooftheday #instaphoto #instacute” by dadblunders is licensed under CC BY 2.0Anne G. Wheaton, Ph.D. Epidemiologist Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion Division of Population Health Epidemiology and Surveillance Branch Atlanta, GA  30341-3717 MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? Response: Insufficient sleep among children and adolescents is associated with an increased risk for obesity, diabetes, injuries, poor mental health, and attention and behavior problems. In previous reports, CDC had found that, nationwide, approximately two thirds of U.S. high school students report sleeping <8 hours per night on school nights. CDC conducted this study to provide state-level estimates of short sleep duration on school nights among middle school and high school students using age-specific recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM). AASM has recommended that children aged 6–12 years should regularly sleep 9–12 hours per 24 hours and teenagers aged 13–18 years should sleep 8–10 hours per 24 hours for optimal health. (more…)
Author Interviews, Education, Pediatrics, Sleep Disorders / 12.10.2017

MedicalResearch.com Interview with: Jack Peltz, Ph.D. Clinical assistant professor in Psychiatry Rochester Medical Center MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings? Response: Approximately 90% of high-school aged adolescents get either insufficient sleep during school nights or barely meet the required amount of sleep (ie, 8–10 hours) expected for healthy functioning.(1) In fact, sleep problems and insufficient sleep are so pervasive for adolescents that they could be considered an epidemic due to their adverse impact on adolescent mental and physical health.(2–5) As a result,addressing insufficient adolescent sleep represents a critical point of study and intervention. The growing body of evidence suggests that later school start times (SST), 8:30 AM or later as recommended by the American Academy of Pediatricians,6 convey multiple benefits on adolescents, including improved sleep, better mental and physical health, and improved academic outcomes.(7–10) This research, however, has focused on the direct effects of delaying school start times, or specifically how moving SST back directly predicts changes in an outcome (eg, mental health, academic achievement). This type of analysis precludes examining the important role that SST might play as a condition or context under which other sleeprelated processes take place. For instance, earlier school start times might exacerbate the impact of sleep-related processes on adolescent behavioral health outcomes. Thus, incorporating school start times as a larger contextual variable that might moderate models of sleep and adolescent functioning represents a gap in the literature and a unique opportunity to advance conceptual models. Accordingly, the current study examines the moderating role of school start times on the associations between sleep hygiene, sleep quality, and mental health. (more…)