Researchers at NYU's Langone Medical Center have been following more than 200 kids for four decades. They found those who had ADHD in their early years were twice as likely to be obese at age 41.

"This study was started by Dr. Rachel Klein in 1970, and it involved a number of waves of evaluation, during which the results of having hyperactivity in childhood were assessed," said Dr. F. Xavier Castellanos, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU and one of the study authors.

"We brought back individuals who were 41 years of age, and examined a number of measures, including brain imaging analyses.  But during those brain imaging analyses, we noted that men who had been hyperactive children had a greater difficulty sitting in the scanner - they were too large for the research scanner."

That's when the idea took shape to look at all of the subjects' height and weight.  Castellanos and his team instantly noticed the high levels of obesity – twice as high as those adults who never suffered from ADHD.

"This was not the first time this has been noted, so in that sense it is a confirmation," said Castellanos. "But other studies have not been able to be as definitive. Other studies have found a general tendency towards increased weight, but this is the first study that puts this in terms of clear clinical obesity."

However, there is no clear reason as to why ADHD may lead to obesity.

"The most reasonable explanation is that the characteristics of ADHD which involve being impulsive - having a difficult time selecting between (things) that maybe immediately gratifying but in the long run are not such a good idea - that that translates to the choices that are made at lunchtime and dinner and snacking," said Castellanos, though he said there was no direct evidence of that being the case, only speculation.

Other experts say while this correlation appears to be strong, more research needs to be done.

"The sample size was relatively small, and they only looked at white men," said CNN.com expert Dr. Jennifer Shu, a spokeswoman for the American Academy of Pediatrics. "That said, their conclusion summed it up nicely: people need to be aware that having childhood ADHD may put them at risk for later obesity."

Shu also suggested another possible explanation for the link - current treatments are largely centered around stimulant medications, which tend to reduce appetite. If the medication is stopped, appetite increases and patients may start gaining weight.

The bottom line, says Castellanos?

"It's very difficult across the board for people to lose weight and keep it off, so it's one of those things that is really best prevented," he said. "That's the major importance of alerting the public - we can look into the future and say, 'This is coming up, so it's better to not ignore this potential risk and wait for it to become a problem.'"

But it's not entirely the fault of the mosquitoes. Scientists are exploring how the malaria parasite itself may actually change a mosquito's behavior to make it more attracted to humans, as if controlling its mind so that the bug goes after us.

A new study in the journal PLOS One demonstrates, for the first time, that mosquitoes infected with malaria are more attracted to human odor than uninfected mosquitoes. This is only a proof of concept, however; more research needs to be done to confirm.

“What we've shown is malaria parasites can manipulate the mosquito's behavior to make it sense our body odor much more easily, and that means they’re much more likely to find us," said Dr. James Logan of the Department of Disease Control at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, senior author of the study.

Methods

Researchers used 59 malaria-infected mosquitoes and 97 mosquitoes that were not infected. (Only female mosquitoes transmit the parasite.)

A male volunteer wore nylon socks for 20 hours to collect human odor on the material. Scientists then examined how mosquitoes responded to a human-smelling sock compared with a standard nylon sock without a human odor.

Results

Both groups of mosquitoes were generally uninterested in the sock without the human odor. But mosquitoes with malaria paid a lot more attention to the human-smelling sock, landing on it and probing it more than the non-infected mosquitoes.

This represents the first time female mosquitoes have exhibited a behavior change as a result of malaria in response to human odor, the study authors wrote.

Implications

Logan and colleagues have won a research grant to study this further over three years. In the next step, they will take body smell samples from 30 people, "mixing it all up so we’ve got an overall coverage of different types of human odor," he said. Scientists already know that individuals can differ in their attractiveness to mosquitoes.

Eventually, this may lead scientists to identify chemicals that can be used as lures for traps to target malaria-infected mosquitoes. Currently, the traps catch all kinds of mosquitoes, regardless of their malaria status. It would be more efficient, and better for monitoring purposes, to trap only those that have the parasite. This method might even be used to bring the population down.

There are some other intriguing examples in nature of how parasites control the minds of their hosts. A type of fungus, for example, can take over and eventually kill the ants it infects.

But these "zombie ants" don't have the tremendous human impact of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, which caused an estimated 660,000 deaths in 2010.

"The importance is that we showed in a biologically relevant system of a mosquito, a parasite and a blood host, that the parasite can manipulate the behavior of a mosquito," said lead study author Renate Smallegange, who now works at Wageningen Academic Publishers.

More: New discovery may be step toward ending malaria

Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina explored covering key surfaces in hospital intensive care units in copper alloy, and found that this is an effective measure against the spread of some key types of bacterial infections. Their study is published in the journal Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.

Background

Up to $45 billion a year is spent on health care costs related to hospital-acquired infections, and an estimated 100,000 deaths occur annually because of them, the study authors wrote.

The antimicrobial properties of copper have been known for hundreds of years, said Michael Schmidt, the study's senior author - for at least 4,500 years. Ancient Indians realized that if water sits in a copper pot, this prevents illness, because the copper kills the bacteria. It's not used as often nowadays because molded plastics and stainless steel have taken over, being easy and in expensive.

How does it work? Copper is used to transmit electrons in walls for electricity. Similarly, bacteria will donate electrons to the copper metal, which places the organism in an electrical deficit. As a consequence, free radicals are generated inside the cell. The cell's proteins essentially get bleached, and its DNA get fractured. The electrical potential of the cell also gets collapsed.

"It's pretty hard to develop resistance from that multi-hit mechanism of action," Schmidt said.

How they did it

The study authors conducted the trial in the intensive care units of three different hospitals. Patients were randomly placed in copper or non-copper rooms. The study took place between July 2010 and June 2011.

Copper is an expensive material, so researchers carefully chose which parts of the ICU room should have the coating, based on the likelihood of a patient, staff member or visitor touching it. These included the rails that the patient uses to lift himself or herself out of bed, chair arms, the IV pole, the remote control and the tray that's used over the bed. On the whole, copper surfaces covered less than 10% of the room in the settings used in this study.

The researchers were most interested in the spread of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE). They compared the rates of hospital-acquired infections from any cause, or colonization with one of these two types of bacteria in the patients. Colonization means the bacteria is present on the person - such as on the skin, respiratory tract or gastrointestinal tract - without signs or symptoms of infection, said lead study author Dr. Cassandra Salgado.

Results

Rooms with copper alloy surfaces were associated with lower infection and colonization for both of these types of bacteria than in normal ICU rooms. For hospital acquired infections, the rate was lowered from 0.081 to 0.034.

Implications

The challenge, of course, is investing the capital into buying new furniture and equipment for ICU rooms, Schmidt said. But he calculates that the cost of outfitting a room in this way would be recovered, in terms of money saved from preventing infections, after three months.

The researchers did not look at whether this intervention affects a patient's 30-day readmission rate, or whether it would work in a hospital room that's not part of an ICU.

Other researchers are looking at whether copper also stops carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE), a deadly, antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, Schmidt said.

"Bacteria have sex so quickly among their friends in their hospital environment, it may actually reduce the spread of CRE and other multi-drug resistant microbes, simply because the DNA is fractured," Schmidt said.

Some of the study authors reported financial connections to the Copper Development Industry, which is the market development, engineering and information services arm of the copper industry.

But this isn't the only research team that's looking into this question. A separate group at the University of California, Los Angeles, received a $2.5 million federal grant in 2012 to study the germ-fighting effectiveness of copper in hospitals. The cost effectiveness of that is still unclear, said Dr. Daniel Uslan, director of the antimicrobial stewardship program at UCLA's Geffen School of Medicine.

"I suspect the costs will be favorable, but more data is needed and I hope our study at UCLA will answer this important question," he said in an e-mail. "We also don't yet know which surfaces in a room are most critical. Can you get by with just coating one or two items, or do all the touch surfaces need to be copper coated? Obviously the costs will change dramatically depending on the number of surfaces coated."

The news follows a decades-long push to get Americans to reduce the amount of salt in their diet because of strong links between high sodium consumption and hypertension, a known risk factor for heart disease.

The IOM, at the request of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reviewed recent studies published through 2012 that explored ties between salt consumption and direct health outcomes like cardiovascular disease and death. The organization describes itself as "an independent, nonprofit organization that works outside of government to provide unbiased and authoritative advice to decision makers and the public."

Researchers determined there wasn't enough evidence to say whether lowering salt consumption to levels between 1,500 and 2,300 mg per day could increase or decrease your risk of heart disease and mortality. But lowering sodium intake might adversely affect your health, the panel found.

"These new studies support previous findings that reducing sodium from very high intake levels to moderate levels improves health," said committee chair Brian Strom, the George S. Pepper professor of public health and preventive medicine at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine. "But they also suggest that lowering sodium intake too much may actually increase a person's risk of some health problems."

Those problems, he said, could include heart attack or death.

The current Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that a sub-group of people - anyone older than  51, African Americans, and people with high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease - limit their salt intake to 1,500 mg a day.

The IOM committee found no benefit, but possibly a risk of poor health outcomes with lower salt intake in people with these pre-existing conditions, but said that evidence is inconsistent and limited.

"While the current literature provides some evidence for adverse health effects of low sodium intake among individuals with diabetes, CKD (kidney disease), or pre-existing CVD (cardiovascular disease), the evidence on both the benefit and harm is not strong enough to indicate that these subgroups should be treated differently from the general U.S. population," the report said.

"Thus, the committee concluded that the evidence on direct health outcomes does not support recommendations to lower sodium intake within these subgroups to, or even below, 1,500 mg per day."

American adults eat on average 3,400 mg of salt a day, according to the IOM. Groups like the American Heart Association (AHA) support reducing that number. In 2011, the AHA called for a reduction in daily consumption, recommending all Americans eat no more than 1,500 mg a day.

The IOM report, the AHA said Tuesday, does not accurately assess salt impact on health. "While the American Heart Association commends the IOM for taking on the challenging topic of sodium consumption, we disagree with key conclusions," said the association's CEO, Nancy Brown. "The report is missing a critical component – a comprehensive review of well-established evidence which links too much sodium to high blood pressure and heart disease."

The Salt Institute says it welcomes the IOM study, calling it a major breakthrough in the salt debate.

"This whole thing has been blood pressure-driven and this study finally looks at overall health outcomes," said Morton Satin, vice president of science and research for the institute.

"The study makes it very, very clear that the level of 1,500 mg that has been recommended in the dietary guidelines is not warranted, despite this full-throated cry for these levels by some organizations ... We hope this is the opening of the much broader review of the available evidence and a devotion to ensuring that our guidelines reflect the science."

The IOM panel was not asked to make recommendations on what a healthy range should be. It says more research is needed to help shed light on how lower sodium levels affect health in all Americans.

On Monday, the Center For Science In The Public Interest published results of a new investigation on what they call the food industry's failed efforts to reduce sodium levels in pre-packaged and restaurant foods.  It called for phased-in limits in an effort to prevent heart disease.  The group tracked nearly 500 food products between 2005 and 2011.

"The strategy of relying on the food industry to voluntarily reduce sodium has proven to be a public health disaster," said  CSPI executive director Michael F. Jacobson.  "Inaction on the part of industry and the federal government is condemning too many Americans to entirely preventable heart attacks, strokes, and deaths each year."

"This suggests there is a subgroup of students who may place themselves, their passengers and others on the road at elevated risk for a crash-related injury or fatality by engaging in multiple risky MV (motor vehicle) behaviors," wrote the authors of the study, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

The study

Researchers analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's 2011 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which asked high school students whether they had texted while driving in the 30 days previous. Nearly half of the 8,505 students aged 16 or older who answered that question reported doing so. The survey also queried participants on behaviors such as wearing a seat belt or riding in a car with a driver who had been drinking.

The results

Students who engaged in texting while driving (TWD) regularly were more likely to wear seatbelts irregularly; ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol; and drive when they had also been drinking alcohol, according to the study.

"For example, students who engaged in TWD on 10 to 19 days, 20 to 29 days, or all 30 days were more likely than students who engaged in TWD on 1 to 2 days to ride with a driver who had been drinking alcohol and drive when drinking alcohol," study authors wrote.

Students who said they had texted while driving on all 30 days were more than 40% more likely to not always wear a seat belt as a passenger than students who said they had texted while driving on 1 to 2 days.

Separate research suggests that teenagers know such behaviors are unsafe, but "teenagers who engage in these behaviors may tend to view them as being less of a safety risk than teenagers who do not engage in them," according to the study.

The limitations

The findings have several limitations, the study noted. Survey questions did not distinguish between sending, receiving or reading texts, "which may be perceived as having different levels of risk."

In addition, the question regarding riding with a driver who has been drinking did not distinguish between parents or peer drivers: "Students may perceive they had no choice whether to ride with a parent who had been drinking alcohol."

Lastly, the data is self-reported, and the "extent of underreporting or over reporting of TWD on this survey cannot be determined."

The takeaway

Strategies to reduce texting while driving and other risky behaviors may include state laws and advances in technology, according to the study. However, "parental supervision of their teenage drivers may be the  most effective prevention strategy," the study said.

Researchers, however, now believe they have discovered a way to track the spread of drug-resistant malaria, and this discovery may help to finally eradicate the disease. Their study was recently published in the journal Nature Genetics.

“We’ve seen past cases of (malaria) drug resistance spread in a specific pattern,” said study author Nicholas White from Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and the University of Oxford in the UK. “It starts in Cambodia, spreads across Southeast Asia and crosses over to Africa, killing millions of children in the process.”

Resistance to artemisinins - the group of drugs doctors currently use to treat malaria - has been noticed in Cambodia in recent years, sparking concern that an untreatable type of malaria could spread worldwide.

But an international team of researchers says it has identified unique genetic fingerprints for artemisinin-resistant strains of the parasite. This, they say, may help detect and contain this hard-to-treat form of malaria before it spreads worldwide. They remain unsure, however, how soon humans might benefit.

Researchers looked at the genes of 825 malaria-causing parasites collected from 10 locations across Africa and Southeast Asia.

They found three previously undiscovered artemisinin-resistant strains of the parasite in western Cambodia. Each had a specific genetic makeup not seen in any other type of malaria-causing parasite.

This identification of genetic fingerprints specific to artemisinin-resistant malaria parasites is a significant step towards tracking and eventually stopping the spread of this type of malaria, said White.

In the future, the genetic fingerprints identified by the researchers could be used to create a blood test that may predict whether someone with malaria will respond to treatment with artemisinin, said WHO Global Malaria Program coordinator Dr. Pascal Ringwald. “Being able to test people in this way should quickly reveal which parts of the world the resistance has spread to,” said Ringwald.

Scientists can then push strategies, such as compulsory use of preventive medicines for travelers coming into these areas, to keep this type of malaria from moving beyond these areas, he added.

The WHO reports that global deaths from malaria have fallen by more than 25% since 2000, but around 3.3 billion people remain at risk of the disease – most of them children younger than 5.

Valproate sodium (Depacon), valproic acid (Depakene and Stavzor), and divalproex sodium (Depakote, Depakote CP and Depakote ER) are among the valproate products the FDA says pregnant women should never use. That includes their generic versions.

“Valproate medications should never be used in pregnant women for the prevention of migraine headaches because we have even more data now that show the risks to the children outweigh any treatment benefits for this use,” said Dr. Russell Katz, director of the Division of Neurology Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

The drug also is used to treat epileptic seizures and bipolar disorder. The agency says pregnant women taking valproate products for these conditions should only take the drug if other medications don't work. Women who can get pregnant should only use valproate products if absolutely necessary. According to a safety communication issued by the Agency on Monday, "all non-pregnant women of childbearing age taking valproate products should use effective birth control."

Valproate medications already come with a boxed warning on the label about the risk to the fetus and birth defects. In 2011 the FDA issued an alert following preliminary results from the NEAD study - Neurodevelopmental Effects of Antiepileptic Drugs - that showed reduced cognitive test scores in 3-year-olds who had been exposed to valproate. Product labels were updated at that time.

The recently published final results of the NEAD study found children exposed to the drugs in utero had decreased IQ's between 8 and 11 points at six years of age compared to children exposed to other antiepileptic medicine. The FDA strengthened their recommendations because of that study.

In April, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found a significant increased risk of autism in children whose mothers used valproate during pregnancy.

New labeling changes are in the works. For valproate products, the drug will now drop from a category "D", which means the drug's benefit to pregnant women may be acceptable despite potential risks, to a Category "X," which means the risk outweighs any possible benefit.

The FDA recommends women talk to their doctor before discontinuing their medication.

1. Moms and dads are distracted while driving kids

Researchers asked 600 parents what distractions they encountered while driving their most precious cargo: Their children. Among the interruptions: Talking on the phone, texting, surfing the Internet, checking a navigation system, and changing a CD or DVD.

Almost 90% of parents admitted to doing at least one of these technology-based distractions.

“These distracted drivers were more likely to have been in a crash,” noted the study’s lead author, Dr. Michelle Macy, a specialist in pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Michigan’s  C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

2. Teen drivers are distracted, too

In another study, researchers reviewed a survey of 7,833 high schoolers. During the past 30 days, almost half had texted or emailed while driving.

Laws banning texting didn’t seem to stop the behavior all that much. In states where texting was illegal, 39% of teens still sent messages, compared to 44% of teens in states without restrictions.

“The reality is that millions of teens text while driving,” said Dr. Andrew Adesman, the study’s senior investigator, who specializes in the behavior of kids at Cohen Children’s Medical Center of New York.

3. Teenage cyber-bullying hurts a lot of kids

Another of Adesman’s studies looked at how texting and other electronic means of communicating are empowering high school bullies. Researchers reviewed a survey of more than 15,000 high school students.

One in six acknowledged getting bullied electronically in the last year. More girls reported being attacked than boys.

“We must recognize that these new technologies carry with them the potential to traumatize youth in new and different ways,” Adesman said.

4. High school athletes hide concussions  

In this study, researchers asked 120 high school football players in Cincinnati whether they’d let a concussion sideline them.

The football players were well aware of the symptoms - headache, dizziness, difficulty remembering, sensitivity to light and sound, difficulty concentrating, feeling in a fog - but only half said they’d fess up and report a potential concussion to their coach.

A small percentage even said “athletes have a responsibility to play in important games with a concussion,” according to the study’s co-author, Dr. Brit Anderson, who specializes in pediatric emergency medicine at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

“It is possible that concussion education alone may not be enough to promote safe concussion behaviors in high school football players,” Anderson said.

5. Doctors aren't following guidelines to treat preschoolers with ADHD

For preschoolers with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder the initial recommended treatment is behavior therapy—not medication.

But this new study finds 1 in 5 specialists—neurologists, psychiatrists, developmental pediatricians—are using medication as part of the initial treatment, either alone or along with the recommended behavior therapy. Researchers heard from 611 specialists to reach their conclusion.

“It is unclear why so many physicians who specialize in the management of ADHD…fail to comply with recently published treatment guidelines,” said Adesman, who was also involved in this new research.

Adesman says parents should know that, generally, using medication as the first treatment for their preschooler’s ADHD isn’t recommended.

Though it's hard to admit, most parents have done the latter. You're out at the mall when your kid drops his pacifier and there's not a place to clean it nearby. So you pick it up, suck on it a bit and hand it back to your baby.

What's the harm?

Turns out cleaning a recently dropped pacifier with your saliva - meaning you put it in your mouth before inserting it back into your baby's - may actually help strengthen your child's immune system and keep him from developing certain allergies, according to a new study in the journal Pediatrics. When parents cleaned pacifiers in this way their children were significantly less likely to develop eczema, a skin condition considered to be the most common early form of allergies.

The study

Researchers enrolled about 180 Swedish children in the study and took samples of their saliva. Babies whose parents had put the pacifier in their own mouths to clean it had a different microbe soup, if you will, then those whose parents had either rinsed the pacifiers under water or boiled it.

At 18 months the children whose parents licked the pacifiers had one-third the risk of developing eczema compared to children whose parents used a different cleaning method.

The scientists also looked at the number of respiratory infections among the children.  They found that both groups, on average, had the same number of infections, no matter how the pacifiers were cleaned.

Behind the results

It seems counter-intuitive - wouldn't adding your germs to the floor dirt on the pacifier make your baby sick?

Scientists think that sucking the pacifier transfers some of Mom or Dad's bacteria to the infant. Research has shown that babies need to be exposed to a wide variety of bacteria, viruses and other organisms to help their immune systems develop and mature properly. If this doesn't happen early, the baby's system tends to overreact to harmless particles like cat hair, pollen, or various foods, treating them as if they are dangerous, which can lead to allergies.

Our emphasis to keep things exceedingly clean over the last few decades may actually be depriving a baby's immune system of some of the organisms it needs to help it thrive, according to the study.

Takeaway

"Should we change our behavior based on this study?" asks Dr. Elizabeth Matsui, a pediatric allergist and immunologist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Allergy and Immunology Executive Committee. "I would say no."

"But this study does bring up intriguing questions about the oral bacteria and how it might influence a developing immune system in a positive say to protect against allergy," adds Matsui. She says more studies are needed to see if these findings can be replicated.

Bottom line: The next time you're out at the mall and have forgotten an extra pacifier, don't be too concerned if you need to clean the dropped one with your own saliva.

Between 1999 and 2010, suicides in the 35-to-64 age group increased 28.4%, according to the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Suicides among people aged 50 to 59 years old specifically almost doubled during that time period.

More than 38,000 Americans killed themselves in 2010; that's more than double those who were killed in a homicide that same year, according to the CDC. In 2009, the number of deaths from suicide in the United States surpassed the number of deaths from motor vehicle crashes for the first time.

“Suicide is a tragedy that is far too common,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden said in a statement. “This report highlights the need to expand our knowledge of risk factors so we can build on prevention programs that prevent suicide.”

Suicide rates in this age group were highest among American Indians and Alaska Natives, according to the report. The next biggest increase was seen in whites. Among American Indians and Alaska Natives, the suicide rate for women jumped 81.4%; for men it was a 59.5% increase.

The three most common suicide methods were firearms, poisoning and suffocation.

Nobody has data yet on why suicides are increasing in this age group, says Lanny Berman, executive director of the American Association of Suicidology. "But the working assumption is that it's related to the economic recession."

The 2007 recession affected middle-aged males more than any other demographic, he says. Job loss and other financial difficulties can lead to depression.

We're probably never going to have a causal explanation for the growing suicide rate, Berman says, but future research may be able to show specific trends that were occurring side-by-side during the same time period.

If you or a loved one needs help, please call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or visit Suicidepreventionlifeline.org.