Mothering Malnutrition
In southern Asia where 75 million children are malnourished, a lack of actually having food could only be part of the problem. A study in Pakistan found that mothers who because depressed after or before giving birth had babies with stunted growth and diarrhea the babies born with psychologically healthy mothers.
Depression in mothers contributes to high rates of malnutrition and failure to thrive among infants in this part of the world. Most people living in southern Asia have access to adequate food supplies.
In another study maternal depression exhibited a stronger link to poor infant health in the first year after birth then other factors associated with slow physical growth including low birth weight and poor uneducated parents.
Several reports indicated that depression rate of 10-15% among expectant and new mothers in western nations doubles in Southern Asia. Psychological well being could increase the effectiveness of child health programs in many developing areas these programs focus on improving mother’s baby feeding and providing medical services to infants.
Researchers contacted 632 women between 17 and 40 in the third trimester living in villages in rural Palestine. 160 women were depressed with symptoms consisting of persistent sadness, loss of interests or pleasure in daily activities, unrelenting fatigue, guilty and suicidal thoughts and disturbed sleep or appetite.
Another 160 women with no symptoms participated. Infants in both groups were weighed and measured at birth, 2,6, and 12 months. Also other types of babies’ health were measured among with the mother’s conditions. Infants whose mothers were depressed through the time periods weighed less and had more diarrhea.
It was found that in India and Pakistan because of social pressers to produce males maternal depression occurs in women who bare girls. Although in mother who are depressed boys and girls display common poor health. The suspicion that depression interferes with mother capacity to care of infants and these problems are magnified in developing countries.
Questions
1.What are some of the symptoms the mother’s are having?
2. Do you think this is brought on by surrounds or is genetic?
3. Does it make sense that there is more stress brought on to have males, which leads to depression?
4. Are the women depressed before they know if it is a male?
5. Do you think this only happens often in developing countries?
Assault on Autism
Children with autism generally have trouble communicating, interacting socially and controlling behavior. Most live in a world of their own. It can be treated if caught early but there is no cure. 1 in every 1,000 child has autism.
Beth Crowell’s triplets were diagnosed with autism at 15 months old. She researched doubting there was a genetic mutation. She suspected that a drug, Terbutaline she had taken during her pregnancy to prevent premature labor might have played a role.
Researching this showed that when exposed to terbitalone before birth had some barin abnormalities in rats, this shifted scientific thinking about what causes autism and made them take a harder look at environmental influences. “it was thought we could identify the causes if we could understand those connections but we’re still left searching for causes. There was a missing piece of the puzzle, which was the environment.”
In the past decade it has been an issue if vaccines in childhood have caused autism. Because of mercury based vaccines that have been mostly phased out nowadays. Most researchers studying autism now assume it had to do with genes and factors from outside the body.
Environmental aspects include, drugs vaccines and poisons substances, but these don’t necessarily have to be artificial can also deal with influences in the womb, which can be anything that effects pregnancy such as maternal viral infections.
It was also found that rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders in which the immune system attacks the body are unexpectedly common in families with autistic kids. Researchers don’t want to emphasize terbutaline exposure because there isn’t only one mechanism that can overestimate.
Questions
1.Name some symptoms of Autism.
2. When is it better to diagnose?
3. What are some environmental factors that could cause it?
4. What drug used in pregnancy can cause it?
5. How might vaccines affect it?
Malaria Vaccine Shows Promise in Mozambique
Experimental vaccine offers come protection in a large-scale study. Researchers injected 1,605 children from 1 to 4 years old . Half received 3 doses plus Hepatitis B. The others got 3 injections of Hepatitis B and meningitis
Six months later researchers were able to assess 1,380 children spilt in the groups. In 123 children and 159 had episode of malaria with fever and illness, 11 and 26 were judged on having it severe. The result equals the new vaccine shows the protection against contracting malaria and life threatening malarial episodes.
Questions
- Why are these two different test groups used?
- Why was Mozambique used?
- How may these findings help in future countries
- If malaria is treated and successfully taken care of, do you think it will lead to over population in certain plagued countries?
How can this be a good/bad thing?
