Wandering in the Woods

To desensitize young children to their allergy to eggs, physicians from Greece say "let them eat cake."

Heat modifies certain egg allergens and, in turn, allows some children with egg allergies to be "treated" by feeding them ever increasing amounts of egg baked in a cake, Dr. George N. Konstantinou and colleagues, at the University of Athens report.

They used this approach to accelerate the development of tolerance to hen's eggs among 94 boys and girls referred to the food allergy department at the university.

After undergoing 6 months of desensitization, 90 percent of the children could tolerate egg baked in a cake, the researchers report in a preliminary, online posting by the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

"Parents should be aware that there are novel approaches for handling egg allergy," said study co-investigator Dr. Nikolaos G. Papadopoulos.

But he cautions not to try this at home. "Children with a known food allergen should be treated under the supervision of a specialized physician," Papadopoulos told Reuters Health.

The investigators' treated children 12 to 48 months old. Thirty-nine had skin prick test sensitivity to hen's eggs and 55 had been diagnosed with hen's egg allergy after eating egg. Most of the children also had atopic eczema, a chronic scaly or itchy skin rash.

Each child was initially given 0.1 grams of cake that contained 0.63 milligrams of total egg protein. Each subsequent dose tripled the previous amount of egg protein until the children were eating 1.5 grams of total egg protein.

Over 6 months, just 7 of the children still had itching, eczema, or more severe reactions to the baked egg challenge.

The investigators then gave a whole egg to the 87 children who did not react to baked eggs and only 4 reacted with itching or eczema.

These findings suggest that consuming small quantities of baked egg antigen might alter the natural course of egg allergy, the investigators note. They are currently conducting a study to compare this egg allergy desensitization approach in allergic children who will receive desensitization treatment and those who with receive a "placebo."

SOURCE: Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, Article in Press, July 15, 2008

Officials say they've reassigned a kindergarten teacher whose Port St. Lucie, Fla., class "voted out" a 5-year-old boy who is being tested for a form of autism.

After the boy misbehaved last week, teacher Wendy Portillo "decided to bring him in front of the class and let the other kids tell him what they didn't like about him, kind of ridiculed him," Michelle Steele, a police spokeswoman, tells the Palm Beach Post.

The newspaper says students then voted 14-2 in favor of having the boy removed from Portillo's classroom.

"He was incredibly upset," Melissa Barton, the boy's mother, says in an interview with the Port St. Lucie News. "The only friend he has ever made in his life was forced to do this."

A school spokeswoman says Portillo has been removed from the classroom pending the outcome of an internal review.

Posted by Mike Carney at 02:08 PM/ET, May 27, 2008 in Education | Permalink

A generation ago, kindergarten was supposed to get kids ready for school. But now everyone is talking about the importance of “school readiness” before kids get to kindergarten.

That’s why many parents, anxious for their children to succeed in school, want early care and education programs to have children sit at tables using work sheets, drills, and flash cards to learn letters and numbers and even starting to read, add, and subtract.

But preschoolers learn differently from school-age children: play is essential to early learning. Play is the main way children learn and develop ideas about the world. It helps them build the skills necessary for critical thinking and leadership. It’s how they learn to solve problems and to feel good about their ability to learn.

Children learn the most from play when they have skilled teachers who are well-trained in understanding how play contributes to learning.

Most child development experts agree that play is an essential part of a high-quality early learning program. Play is not a break from learning—it’s the way young children learn.

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This article originally appeared in the May-June 2007 issue of the Children's Advocate, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Play: It’s the way young children learn
A special supplement to the Children’s Advocate, based on a policy brief from the Bay Area Early Childhood Funders
(References coming soon at 4children)

Long known to help prevent birth defects, folic acid may also help prevent premature births, new research suggests.

In a large study that included almost 40,000 women, a team of U.S. and Irish researchers found that women who took folic acid supplements for a year or longer before conception had a 70 percent decreased risk of preterm birth between 20 and 28 weeks of gestation.

( Folic Acid )

Parents fork over billions of dollars for CDs, DVDs, toys and other products that promise to make their babies smarter - and governments invest in programs to maximize children's brain development from birth through age 3. But many efforts to build "brighter babies" are doomed to failure because they are built on misinterpretations and misapplications of brain research, a report says.

( This is your baby's brain on Mozart )

By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY

British Baby Formula companies have to change nutritional claims

This is a good thing. These companies shouldn't get to say that their formula is just as good as breast milk.

By E.J. Mundell
HealthDay Reporter

The largest study of the genetics of autism ever conducted, involving DNA from almost 1,200 affected families worldwide, has already yielded two important clues to the poorly understood disorder, scientists say.

Discoveries in two areas of the genome -- a region on chromosome 11 suspected of having links to autism, and aberrations in a brain-development gene called neurexin 1 -- could spur more targeted research, the experts noted.

"That's the real promise here," said Autism Genome Project co-researcher Dr. Stephen Scherer, director of the Center for Applied Genomics at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. "When you identify certain genes, you can then develop genetic tests -- in some cases prenatal and in some cases postnatal -- because early diagnosis is crucial here."


Genetic discoveries can also further research toward a cure for autism, Scherer said.


( Autism )