Peanut allergy 'more common in well-off boys'

By John von Radowitz, PA

Monday, 7 February 2011

Potentially fatal childhood peanut allergies mainly affect better-off boys, research has shown. A study found that young boys have higher rates of the condition than young girls, and children from well-off homes are more likely to be affected than those from poorer backgrounds. More research is needed to explain the trends, say scientists.The findings, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, emerged from the health records of more than 400 GP practices in England between 2001 and 2005. They showed that boys younger than 20 are almost a third more vulnerable to peanut allergies than girls in the same age group. However, the pattern reverses in adulthood with slightly more women than men being at risk. Part of the reason may be that after the age of 15 women are more likely to visit their doctor and therefore have the allergic condition detected, say the researchers. Another possibility is that biological changes linked to sex hormones around the time of puberty might influence immune system-driven allergic reactions. The highest rates of peanut allergy were found in children between the ages of five and nine. The research suggests more than 25,000 people in England have been diagnosed with a peanut allergy at some point in their lives, a lower figure than previous estimates. It is not yet clear whether fewer people are actually being affected or whether the change is due to under-recording of cases by GPs. Dr Daniel Kotz, who led the Department of Health-funded study, said: "This research has shown that whilst peanut allergy is less common than previously thought, it affects over 25,000 people in England. Having a serious allergy like this can cause great anxiety and stress to those affected.

We now need more research to help explain why the condition occurs relatively more often in boys and affluent people." Peanut allergies commonly cause breathing problems. At their most serious they can trigger life-threatening anaphylactic shock. http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/peanut-allergymore-common-in-welloff-boys-2206653.html

Children as Young as 12 Months Can Reach a Countertop; Puts Them at Risk for Severe Burns

ScienceDaily (Oct. 4, 2010) Most toddlers can reach as high as a kitchen countertop, putting them at risk for severe burns from hot liquids, according to research presented Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010, at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) National Conference and Exhibition in San Francisco. In the study, "How Far Toddlers Can Reach onto a Standard Kitchen Countertop," investigators and parents urged children, ages 12 to 23 months, to reach for a toy phone atop a standard, 36-inch countertop at a pediatric clinic. The children were of various weights and heights; some wore shoes, some did not. Of the 54 children who participated, 41 (76 percent) could reach at least some distance, with many of the children able to reach as far as eight inches onto the countertop, which was "much farther than anticipated," said lead study author David Allasio, MSW, LMSW, Children's Hospital of Michigan. Many of the younger children were able to reach the countertop and phone by pushing up onto their tip-toes -- a milestone not expected until age 22 months. Children who pull down a cup of hot liquid such as coffee or tea can sustain serious burns requiring hospital admission. "Findings from the research are important as it will help us reduce pain, financial costs and parental distress associated with scald-related burns to children, and the information can be used to better educate parents," said Allasio. Parents participating in the study were surprised by the findings, and subsequently urged to place hot and potentially dangerous liquids and objects toward the back of the countertop, closest to the backsplash and wall.

Source: The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by American Academy of Pediatrics, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Cardiac Arrest: Unique Life-Saving Device Give Heart a Second Chance

ScienceDaily (May 2, 2011) An invention by Rice University bioengineering students in collaboration with the Texas Heart Institute (THI) is geared toward giving immediate second chances to arrhythmia victims headed toward cardiac arrest. For their capstone design project, a team of Rice seniors created a unique pad system for automated external defibrillators (AEDs), common devices that can shock a victim's heart back into a proper rhythm in an emergency. Often, the first shock doesn't reset a heart and the procedure must be repeated, but the sticky pads on the chest must first be repositioned. The pads need to be in the right location to send current through the heart, and someone with no experience who tries to provide aid might miss the first time. The Second-Chance AED Pads let rescuers try again without losing valuable time to remove the pads from the victim's chest. The pads incorporate three electrodes, two in a single pad with an A/B switch attached, and a third in its own pad. If one shock doesn't restart the patient's heart, flipping the switch will change the jolt's path, just a little bit, for the second attempt. The pads were developed by students on the DefibTaskForce -- Lisa Jiang, Joanna Nathan, Justin Lin, Carl Nelson and Brad Otto -- in tandem with Mehdi Razavi, director of electrophysiology clinical research at THI, and their adviser, Renata Ramos, a Rice lecturer in bioengineering. The potential for their project was clear from the beginning. "We did some calculations that suggested we could save at least 13,000 lives per year," Otto said. "Cardiac defibrillation is very time-sensitive. Thirty seconds can be the difference between life and death in a lot of situations. The time it takes to flip the switch is negligible compared with the time it takes to remove the pads, shave and prep a new area on the body, reapply the pads and administer another shock. And a layman might not even know to try a second position." Rather than try to build a new type of AED, the team decided early on that it was enough to simply design new pads that would fit devices that are already in use. Manufacturers generally require AED pads be replaced every two years, which provides a ready market for the students' invention. "But well over 100,000 AED units are produced every year, so even if our pads are only paired with new AEDs, we have a significant market," Lin said. Getting the instructions right turned out to be just as important as the device itself and required a lot of illustrative trial and error. In tests for the final version at Rice's Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, the team recruited students with no experience using an AED to shock a medical mannequin back to life. "We had 100 percent of the testers place the pads correctly, showing it was very intuitive to use," Jiang said.

All five team members, along with Razavi and Ramos, are listed on the provisional patent. They hope an AED manufacturer will pick up the rights to the Second-Chance pads for clinical trials and ultimately FDA approval.

Source: Rice University (2011, May 2). Cardiac arrest: Unique life-saving device give heart a second chance. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 30, 2011,

Shorter Pause in CPR Before Defibrillator Use Improves Cardiac Arrest Survival

ScienceDaily (June 20, 2011) A shorter pause in CPR just before a defibrillator delivered an electric shock to a cardiac arrest victim's heart significantly increased survival, according to a study inCirculation: Journal of the American Heart Association. Researchers found the odds of surviving until hospital discharge were significantly lower for patients whose rescuers paused CPR for 20 seconds or more before delivering a shock (the pre-shock pause), and for patients whose rescuers paused CPR before and after defibrillation (the peri-shock pause) for 40 seconds or more, compared to patients with a pre-shock pause of less than 10 seconds and a perishock pause of less than 20 seconds. "We found that if the interval between ending CPR and delivering a shock was over 20 seconds, the chance of a patient surviving was 53 percent less than if that interval was less than 10 seconds," said Sheldon Cheskes, M.D., principal investigator of the study and assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Toronto. "Interestingly there was no significant association between the time from delivering a shock to restarting CPR, known as the post-shock pause, and survival to discharge. This led us to believe that a primary driver for survival was related to the pre-shock pause interval." The team also found that patients with peri-shock pauses of more than 40 seconds had a 45 percent decrease in survival when compared to those who had perishock pauses of less than 20 seconds. Based on previous studies, American Heart Association resuscitation guidelines advise minimizing interruptions to chest compressions to 10 seconds or less. However, previous studies didn't measure how such pauses in CPR affected survival to hospital discharge. According to this study, emergency medical services (EMS) in the United States treat nearly 300,000 cardiac arrest cases a year that occur outside the hospital. Less than 8 percent survive. Cheskes and colleagues used data gathered by the Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC), a group of 11 U. S. and Canadian Emergency Medical Services that carry out research studies related to cardiac arrest resuscitation and life-threatening traumatic injury. Between Dec. 1, 2005, and June 30, 2007, 815 patients suffered a cardiac arrest and were included in the study. They were treated by EMS paramedics in Toronto and Ottawa, Ontario; Vancouver, B.C.; Seattle/King County, Wash. and Pittsburgh, Pa. The patients were treated with either an automated external defibrillator (AED) or a manual defibrillator. Other findings from the study:
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The length of the post-shock pause showed no significant survival difference between the two groups. AEDs were used to treat 40 percent of the cardiac arrests; 20 percent received shocks from a manual defibrillator. Patients treated with AEDs had pre-shock pause times nearly double those treated in the manual mode, a median of 18 seconds versus 10 seconds. This likely resulted from the time required for an AED to analyze the patient's rhythm as well as the time required to charge it prior to delivering a shock. The study findings could prompt EMS providers and defibrillator manufacturers to adopt changes likely to increase the number of successful cardiac arrest resuscitations, researchers said. These include:

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Paramedics should minimize all CPR interruptions; preferably defibrillate patients in manual mode to limit the pre-shock pause to an "optimal time" of five seconds. Manufacturers should modify defibrillator software to quicken the assessment of a patient's heart rhythm, and allow devices to deliver more timely shocks while in AED

mode. "If these changes occur, I think you have at least the potential to see a greater number of patients surviving cardiac arrest," Cheskes said. Although the study was not a randomized controlled trial, researchers said their findings confirm those of other smaller observational studies and that it would be very difficult to perform a randomized controlled trial given the evidence to date. Furthermore, higher rates of bystander witnessed cardiac arrest and bystander-provided CPR occurred in the study group which may have resulted in a selection bias. Although the study controlled for a large number of resuscitation variables, the potential for other components of CPR such as compression rate and depth may have also confounded the findings.
Source: American Heart Association (2011, June 20). Shorter pause in CPR before defibrillator use improves cardiac arrest survival. ScienceDaily.