According to a new Mayo Clinic study, children who avoid situations or objects that frighten them are more likely to develop anxiety issues in the future. Study author Stephen Whiteside, a pediatric psychologist with the Mayo Clinic Children’s Center, said, “We found that avoidance predicted future anxiety. Kids who tended to avoid at ‘time one’ also tended to have worse anxiety one year later.” The findings were published in the journal Behavior Therapy. Two short surveys developed... 

Humanitarian Organization Save the Children released on Monday its annual report on the state of mothers across the globe. The report states that even though great progress has been made in reducing the maternal and newborn deaths, each year nearly three million babies die between the first day of birth and the 30th day. A large number of those three million only live for hours after being born. Carolyn Miles the President and CEO of the group Save the Children said there is a widespread belief that... 

Nestle SA and Dole Food Co. are amongst food makers going to trial today in California over allegations they violated the state’s law that requires them to have warnings for consumers for the unsafe level of lead that is in baby food, juices and fruit. Del Monte Foods Co., Gerber and Dole all manufacture foods for children that contain some lead and their practices should be changed to lower the levels or provide warnings under California law, said the lawsuit from 2011. Superior Court Judge Stephen... 

In the past three months, two New York City infants from the Orthodox Jewish Community have been infected with herpes. They became infected following a ritual performed at their circumcision, said health department officials. Officials said the names of the infants would not be released. The metzitzah b’peh is the most controversial part of the circumcision ritual. It is carried out by the mohel or practitioner who puts the baby’s penis in his mouth to suck the blood out of the wound to cleanse... 

Experts in child development tell parents they should not give their babies solid foods, such as cereal, until the infant is between 4 and 6 months old. Nevertheless, new research has shown that close to 40% of parents have not heeded the advice of medical experts and have introduced their infants to solid food earlier than 4 months of age. Researchers also said they found that infants who are formula fed were much more apt to receive solid food too soon than those that are breast-fed. Officials... 

An increasing rate of pediatric multiple sclerosis (MS) could be linked to America’s obesity epidemic, according to a new study published in the journal Neurology. A research team led by Annette Langer-Gould, MD, PhD, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation conducted this latest study. Dr. Langer-Gould said, “In our study, the risk of pediatric MS was highest among moderately and extremely obese teenage girls. The rate of pediatric MS cases is likely... 

The milk industry in the U.S. wants to increase its sales by adding aspartame to its milk, with the primary target being the lunchrooms in schools across the country. Sales of milk have been dropping for many decades, but the milk industry might soon be given a new weapon to counter that trend: mix of product labeling, school lunches and aspartame. It has taken nearly four years to reach this point for the milk industry. In 2009, the International Dairy Foods Association and the National Milk Producer... 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday announced it had stopped all clinical pediatric trials for Sensipar an Amgen, Inc. drug following the death of a patient who was 14 years old, who had been taking part in the study of Amgen’s drug. Sensipar, which is already approved for use by adults, is used to help lower calcium levels that are dangerously high in blood. The FDA said it was in the process of collecting data on the teenager’s death. The regulatory agency said it did not know... 

On Wednesday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration released a warning that codeine should not be given to children as a pain reliever after they have had their adenoids or tonsils removed because it could cause death. The governmental regulatory agency said it will require all products that contain codeine to have a boxed warning, the toughest warning the agency has, to instruct medical care providers against the use of codeine in children after those types of surgeries. The FDA said it had received... 

Although Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a rare condition, it appears that it is more common amongst obese and overweight girls, to a point where girls that are extremely obese are close to four times more apt to develop the disease or clinically isolated syndrome (CIS), its precursor. This is what researchers found in the study, whose authors have urged parents to see a doctor if their obese children experience symptoms such as tingling or numbness. MS is a disease of the central nervous system that...