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Both Child Safety Seats and Lap-and-Shoulder Seat Belts Effective in Preventing Serious Injury for Children

Chicago, IL – September 4, 2008 – For young children, all states currently require the use of child safety seats, and the minimum age and weight requirements to graduate to seat belts has been increasing over time. A new study in the journal Economic Inquiry reveals that lap-and-shoulder seat belts perform as well as child safety seats in preventing serious injury. However, safety seats tend to be better at reducing less serious injuries.

Steven D. Levitt of theUniversity of Chicago and author of the book Freakonomics and Joseph J. Doyle of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology analyzed three large representative samples of crashes reported to the police, as well as linked hospital data, among motor vehicle passengers aged 2-6 years of age. Researchers used the data to compare seat belts and child safety seats in preventing injury.

Results show that lap-and-shoulder seat belts perform as well as child safety seats in preventing serious injury. Safety seats were associated with a statistically significant 25 percent reduction in less serious injuries. Lap belts are somewhat less effective than the other two types of restraints, but far superior to riding unrestrained.

“Our comparisons across restraint types incorporate the way they are used, or misused, in practice,” the authors conclude. “Because many child safety seats are, in actual use, improperly installed, our estimates are likely to understate the benefits associated with their proper use. From a public policy perspective, however, understanding how safety devices work in practice, as opposed to under ideal circumstances, is of great importance.”

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This study is published in Economic Inquiry. Media wishing to receive a PDF of this article may contact journalnews@bos.blackwellpublishing.net.

To view the abstract for this article, please click here.

Steven D. Levitt is affiliated with the University of Chicago and can be reached for questions at slevitt@uchicago.edu.

Published since 1962, (formerly Western Economic Journal), EI is widely regarded as one of the top scholarly journals in its field. Besides containing research on all economics topic areas, a principal objective is to make each article understandable to economists who are not necessarily specialists in the article's topic area. Nine Nobel laureates are among EI's long list of prestigious authors.

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Eating More Protein In The Morning Helps Dieters Retain Fullness Throughout The Day

• A study published online last month in the International Journal of Obesity found that eating two eggs for breakfast, as part of a reduced-calorie diet, helped overweight adults lose more weight and feel more energetic than those who ate a bagel breakfast of equal calories.ii
  
  
• A Purdue University study published in a 2007 issue of Obesity, a scientific journal, revealed that a calorie-restricted diet with additional protein resulted in retained post-meal feelings of fullness and improved overall mood. The same study also found that a higher level of protein intake was more effective in maintaining lean body mass during weight loss.iii

• Cook Once, Eat Twice: Use last night's leftover vegetables as fillings for an easy-to-prepare omelet ready to eat in less than two minutes. In addition to the leftovers, fill the omelet with lean Canadian bacon and low-fat cheese for additional flavor and protein punch.
  
  
• Wake Up Right: Start the day off right with a balanced breakfast that pairs high-quality protein, like yogurt or low-fat dairy, with healthy carbohydrates, such as those found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
  
  
• On The Go: For a breakfast meal you can take with you in the morning, try a wrap! Add lean Canadian bacon and low-fat cheese and any other preferred toppings to scrambled eggs, and then spoon into a warm whole wheat tortilla. Fold the tortilla, cut it in half and take it to go.
  
  
• Family Fun: Make breakfast fun for the whole family by serving up creative dishes, like green eggs and ham. Simply add spinach to scrambled eggs and serve with ham for a fun and easy dish that the whole family can help prepare.

• i Leidi HJ, et al. Increased dietary protein consumed at breakfast leads to an initial and sustained feeling of fullness during energy restriction compared to other meal times. British J of Nutr, published online September 2008.
  
  
• ii Vanderwal JS, et al. Egg breakfast enhances weight loss. Int J of Obesity, published online on August 5, 2008.
  
  
• iii Leidy H, Carnell N, Mattes R, Campbell W. Higher protein intake preserves lean mass and satiety with weight loss in pre-obese and obese women. Obes Res. 2007;15:421-429.
  
  
• iv International Food Information Council. 2008 Food & Health Survey: Consumer Attitudes toward Food, Nutrition & Health. Published online at: http://www.ific.org/research/foodandhealthsurvey.cfm

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New Device Helps Premature Babies Suck Better, Faster -- And That's Good

As if things weren't tough enough for premature babies who have tubes down their throats and noses to survive, once the tubes are removed, they are often unable to take nourishment orally that is, suck.

But 20 tube-fed preterm infants with respiratory distress syndrome treated with the NTrainer, a therapeutic device patented by the University of Kansas, rapidly learned to suck far better and transitioned to oral feeding faster than a control group of babies with the syndrome.

Respiratory distress syndrome, also known as hyaline membrane disease, is a common condition of prematurity, particularly in the youngest infants, because babies' lungs are too immature to survive outside the womb without the help of a ventilator and/or oxygen. Overall, it is the seventh leading cause of death among infants younger than one year, fifth for African-American and third for Hispanic infants.

The results of the study were published in the Journal of Perinatology (Nature) and the Acta Paediatrica journal. The initial clinical trial of the NTrainer at the neonatal intensive care units at Stormont-Vail Regional Health Care in Topeka, Kan. and the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., compared 20 tube-fed preterm infants with moderate-to-severe respiratory distress syndrome treated with the NTrainer to a control group of age-matched respiratory distress syndrome infants who received a sham consisting of a non-instrumented pacifier during tube feedings.

The NTrainer device powers a Soothie silicone pacifier with a computer-controlled air pump to transform the nipple into a dynamically patterned pulsing touch stimulus on the surface of the infant's lips and tongue. Modeled extensively on the burst-pause suck dynamics of healthy preterm infants, the NTrainer device essentially teaches babies the correct pattern to produce the "non-nutritive suck," what they normally do in the womb beginning as early as the second trimester of development.

Infants who received the patterned NTrainer treatment exhibited a near doubling of non-nutritive suck burst complexity, a 50 percent to 100 percent increase on select suck burst production measures and a tripling of their average daily oral feed levels to 72.8 percent compared to the untreated controls at 23 percent. The infants were sampled at 38 weeks postmenstrual age the time between the first day of mother's last normal menstrual period and the day of the infant's delivery.

All of the infants quickly learned to bottle feed, one of the main objectives of Stormont-Vail project partners José Gierbolini, medical director of newborn services, and Joy Carlson, neonatal nurse practitioner.

"We were delightfully surprised at the results," said KU speech-language-hearing professor Steven Barlow, who directed the study. "This demonstrates the potent effect of the patterned NTrainer orocutaneous stimulation to drive and reorganize the rapidly developing nervous system."

Barlow, who directs the Communication Neuroscience Laboratories at KU, and University of Colorado professor Donald Finan invented the NTrainer technology (named after the neuroscientific term 'entrainment') and its companion technology, the Actifier, a mobile cribside workstation that can be configured to permit real-time assessment of oromotor ability and therapeutic intervention in the premature infant.

"Non-nutritive suck has been suggested by some neonatologists to provide a window into the development of the central nervous system," said Barlow. "The NTrainer system represents the first objective physiologically based tools that give the physician and nurse almost instant feedback about the status of the infant's oromotor system through the assessment of NNS."

For babies born too soon, the development of non-nutritive suck the precursor behavior to nursing is often abruptly disrupted by the life-saving but invasive breathing tubes that are inserted down the throat and feeding and oxygen tubes taped to a baby's nose and face to keep it from thrusting the tubes out.

Besides delaying release from the neonatal intensive care unit, respiratory distress syndrome infants who cannot competently orally feed may be required to continue tube feedings at home, typically by way of a gastric tube. In worst case scenarios, children don't learn to take nourishment orally for months or even years, according to Barlow.

As an ongoing objective of the study, Barlow's research team will be examining the effects of NTrainer therapy on infants' transitions to safely feeding orally and the length of hospital stay.

"In today's health care environment, being able to send a baby home just one week earlier could save $28,000 to $30,000," Barlow said.

A newly funded $2.6 million clinical trial awarded to Barlow by the National Institutes of Health is set to begin later this fall and continue over the next five years at Stormont-Vail Regional Medical Center and Overland Park Regional Medical Center. This comprehensive study will examine the effects of early NTrainer intervention on the development of feeding skills, fine motor skills, brain development and the acquisition of speech and language among 240 premature infants followed longitudinally until 3 years of age.

Barlow's hypothesizes that if the NTrainer can stimulate a specialized brain network known as the suck central pattern generator in infant brains through normal sucking patterns at the right time, approximately 32 weeks gestational age, development can proceed more normally for respiratory distress syndrome babies. Application of the NTrainer may benefit other preterm populations, including infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia or Down syndrome and very low birthweight preemies at risk for neurologic insults and compromised neurodevelopmental outcome.

The NTrainer system is being developed for market by KC BioMediX Inc. of Shawnee. The NTrainer system received U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration approval in February. The first set of NTrainer production units will be available for the neonatal intensive care market in January.

Barlow is one of the 146 scientists from 20 academic departments affiliated with the Life Span Institute at KU. The Life Span Institute is one of the largest research and development programs in the nation for the prevention and treatment of developmental disabilities. The institute includes 13 centers and more than 140 programs and projects located on the Lawrence campus and KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., and in Overland Park and Parsons.

University of Kansas
1314 Jayhawk Blvd., University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045
United States
http://www.ku.edu

Unlocked: The genetic secrets behind pancreatic and brain cancer that could open door to new treatments

By David Derbyshire

The genetic secrets of two of the most deadly cancers have been unlocked by scientists in a breakthrough that paves the way for a host of new treatments.

In the biggest study of its kind, researchers have found dozens of broken, missing and overactive genes that trigger the growth of potentially lethal tumours of the brain and pancreas.

The results help to explain why the cancers are so hard to treat with conventional drugs. They also open the door to new tests and drugs to stop the diseases in their early stages.

Cancers arise from changes that accumulate in cells' DNA over the course of someone's life. The changes can eventually lead to a cell's uncontrolled growth.

The new study - which involved researchers from 18 universities and institutions - decoded the DNA of brain and pancreas tumour cells taken from more than 40 patients.

The findings suggest that a conventional war on cancer is unlikely to succeed, according to US expert Prof Kenneth Kinzler, one of the researchers involved.

'The landscape of human cancers is clearly more complex than has been previously appreciated,' said Prof Kinzler, from Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, Maryland.

'Fighting it is going to be more of a guerilla war than a conventional one because there are dozens of mutated genes in each tumour. Individually, these mutations don't seem formidable.

'But working together, they form an enemy that will require us to develop novel strategies to combat them, and the best long-term strategy may be early detection of tumours, when the number of guerilla warriors is still small and more easily handled.'

Deadly: Around 4,500 brain tumours are diagnosed each year in the UK and most people die within 14 months of diagnosis

Two teams looked at pancreatic cancer and the most common and dangerous form of brain cancer, glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

Their results were published today in online versions of the journals Science and Nature.

One team of scientists - which included Prof Kinzler - analysed the DNA of more than 20,000 genes from 24 pancreatic and 22 brain tumours.

They found around a dozen chemical pathways in cells which contribute to the development and growth of the cancer. They also found 83 gene mutations involved in pancreatic cancer and 42 in glioblastoma.

Members of the second team, focused on brain cancer and analysed 623 genes from 91 tumours.

They identified some genes known to cause cancer but whose role had previously been underestimated along with genes not previously known to contribute to the disease.

Co-author Dr David Wheeler, Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, US, said: 'Studies like this show the breadth of mutation across many genes. We can see the mutations in all the genes of each pathway that control growth, replication and death in the cancer cell.

'Researchers have never seen the whole landscape like this before, and it's providing many new insights into strategies to diagnose and treat cancer.'

Pancreatic cancer is the 10th most common cancer in Britain and mostly affects people in middle and old age.

Around 7,400 people are diagnosed with the disease each year - usually too late for effective treatment, meaning most people are given a diagnosis of less than a year to live.

The actor Patrick Swayze was diagnosed with the condition earlier this year.

Around 4,500 brain tumours are diagnosed each year in the UK. Glioblastoma is the most common and aggressive variety.

The cancer grows quickly and most people die within 14 months of diagnosis.

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