A Ohio high school teacher has resigned after allegedly taking four cheerleaders to a gay club, according to the Advocate.
Lori Epperson, who taught at Edgewood High School, said that while she did take the girls to Club Masque in Dayton, who were ages 17 and 18, she had permission from their parents to do so. One of the girls was her own daughter.
The teens allegedly got drunk at the club, too. Epperson claims that an acquaintance who they ran into at the club helped the girls buy shots, according to WLWT.com. The matter is under investigation by local police, although no charges has been filed.
A drug used to treat epilepsy, migraines, pain and bipolar disorder has been linked to lower I.Q. in babies whose mothers took it while they were pregnant.
The drug, valproate, which is sold under the brand name Depakote, is the second most popular antiseizure medication, according to the New York Times. A study published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 3-year-olds whose mothers had taken the drug while pregnant had I.Q. scores nine points lower on average than kids whose mothers had taken a different antiseizure medication.
James Tyson and Christina Miczek of Bernhards Bay, N.Y., are under arrest after their sons showed up at school high on marijuana.
The boys reportedly smoked the pot after finding it in their home. A 15-year-old, whose name was not released because he’s a minor, was also charged in the case because he allegedly made a smoking device for the boys, according to the Associated Press.
Officials at Cleveland Elementary School caught the boys high last week. The parents have been charged with endangering the welfare of a child, which is punishable by up to a year in jail.
In Jasper, Tex., neighbors reported a toddler roaming the streets alone Tuesday afternoon. Police investigating found meth and more than a dozen snakes in the child’s home, according to the Associated Press.
The child’s mother, 28-year-old Tamara Jones, has been charged with endangerment of a child by criminal neglect as well as possession of controlled substances.
It’s tempting to reach for the medicine bottle to help your stuffy, sniffling, coughing child. But doctors warn that the cold pills and cough syrups can actually make her sicker.
About 7,000 kids each year end up in the hospital emergency room because of drugstore cold medicine, according to pediatrician groups. Most of the problems occur because of dosing errors.
Last fall, doctors’ groups called for a ban on all cold medicine for kids under age 6. Drug companies compromised, saying that they would recommend on the packages that medicine should not be given to kids under 4. The Food and Drug Administration has not issued an opinion, saying it is studying the effectiveness of cold medication on children.
Doctors at the University of Michigan have the following recommendations for a child’s cold symptoms:
– Use nasal saline drops and a bulb suction to loosen up and remove mucus in blocked noses, or have the child blow his nose.
– For coughs, give a teaspoon of honey or corn syrup to kids over the age of 1. Have them drink warm fluids like water, apple juice and chicken broth.
– Take the child into the bathroom and run a hot shower. The steam relaxes the airways and helps with coughing spasms.
– Increase the humidity in the home to help reduce nasal congestion and coughing.
Cold symptoms caused by a virus typically last between four and five days. If a child is still sick, a doctor’s visit is needed.
Kids are rivaling their grandparents when it comes to taking drugs. A new study says that children are increasingly taking medication for chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes and high cholesterol, usually the afflictions of older people.
The number of kids taking meds for type 2 diabetes jumped by 103 percent between 2002 and 2005, according to a research published in this month’s Pediatrics journal. Prescriptions for cholesterol treatment increased by 15 percent, according to the news release.
Blame it on bad diets. “Our findings show that childhood obesity not only has long-term health implications, but also impacts children’s immediate health,” said Dr. Donna R. Halloran, a pediatrics professor at St. Louis University School of Medicine, which worked on the study with the Kansas Health Institute.
Researchers culled the statistics from a database of 3.5 million kids ages 5 to 19 enrolled in Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit manager. Notable among the numbers was a 46.5 percent rise in prescriptions for asthma and a 40.4 percent jump for treatment of attention deficit disorder.
One unexplainable surprise was why girls are taking more meds than boys for diabetes. The number of girls on the drugs jumped 147 percent, compared to boys, with a 39 percent increase. Researchers say that this pattern does not match the rate of obesity among boys and girls. But they did speculate that girls might be better screened or visiting the doctor more often.
Girls are also taking more antidepressants. Teen girls taking the drugs increased by 6.8 percent whereas researchers saw a slight decline in boys on the meds.
Fewer than half of the U.S. young people who are taking antidepressants are also getting therapy to understand their predicament, according to a new survey of 6.8 million children and teens. The result: kids who are medicated but nevertheless suicidal.
The value of therapy is unquestioned. A government study last year found that Prozac plus therapy cut suicidal thoughts or plans in half from Prozac alone.
“Therapy with antidepressants is the standard of care. But is it what’s going on in the real world? No,” Sheila Marcus, child and adolescent psychiatry chief at the University of Michigan Medical School, told USA Today. The study, by the research firm of Thomson Reuters, looked at four years of results.
The reasons for lack of therapy are manifold. Sometimes kids improve so much with the drugs that therapy is presumed to be superfluous. Often parents don’t have the money to pay for therapy. Sometimes parents, or children, are embarrassed by the need for therapy. Lack of insurance is yet another reason.
The announcement comes a week after pediatricians told health officials that over-the-counter cold medicines should be banned for kids under age 6.
The drug makers also said that they would label their products to warn parents not to give children antihistamines to make them sleepy, the Associated Press reported. Antihistamines are allergy-relief medications that are sometimes found in cold remedies that combine several ingredients to treat a variety of symptoms.
“We are doing this voluntarily out of an abundance of caution,” said Linda Suydam, president of the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, a lobbying group for the drug makers.
Last week, doctors’ groups told the Food and Drug Administration that there was no evidence that over-the-counter cold medicines worked in young children and instead could lead to serious side effects. But health officials worried that if the products were taken off store shelves completely, parents would just give their kids adult medicines.
The FDA is currently studying the effectiveness of the cold medicines in children under 12. More info on the cold medicine debate is available in this previous Minor Troubles posting.
Pediatricians’ groups want the government to immediately recall over-the-counter cough and cold medicines that are marketed to children younger than age 6. The doctors testified on Thursday at a public hearing held by the Food and Drug Administration.
According to the doctors, the effectiveness of cold medicine in children has not been scientifically established and 7,000 kids are sent to the emergency room each year because of problems with the drugs. “When a treatment is ineffective, its risk — unless zero — always exceeds its benefits,” said Dr. Michael Shannon of Children’s Hospital in Boston in an Associated Press story.
Earlier this year, the FDA warned that children younger than two should not be given over-the-counter cold medicine. Manufacturers voluntarily stopped selling remedies targeting infants and toddlers. When the FDA set standards for cold medicines 30 years ago, no separate studies of the drugs were done for children of any ages.
FDA officials say that they want to gather more data on whether the drugs are safe and effective for children older than two. The agency is worried that an immediate ban might prompt parents to just give adult medication to their children.
The doctors’ groups say that colds usually go away on their own and the best remedy is rest and drinking plenty of fluids.
Photo by Eric Hacke
Either American children have many more severe emotional problems than European tykes, or they’re over-medicated.
Those are the two possible conclusions that can be drawn from a new cross-cultural study published in the Sept. 24 online edition of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health.
The study, using data from 2000, found that 6.7 percent of children in the U.S. were taking psychotropic drugs for emotional and behavioral problems, compared with 2 percent in Germany and 2.9 percent in the Netherlands. The gap is greatest in the stimulant and anti-depressant subcategory, which includes such widely prescribed drugs in the U.S. as Prozac and Ritalin.
The report identified “cultural beliefs regarding the role of medication” as one significant reason for the disparity in treatment approaches. In other words, American therapists are much more likely to reach for the prescription pad than their European counterparts.
“Since most of the use is ‘off-label’ — without adequate evidence of benefits and risks — close monitoring should be considered when these medications are used,” lead researcher Julie Zito of the School of Pharmacy at the University of Maryland told HealthDay News.
