Acta Paediatrica

Pre-born babies have the ability to identify phonetic sounds from their native language if they hear speech while in the womb, new research has discovered. The study, carried out in the U.S. and Sweden, asked if newborns demonstrated prenatal learning by measuring responses to vowels in different languages. The findings revealed that the language heard by fetuses does impact newborn perceptions of native language.

Non-infected babies born to HIV positive mothers should be vaccinated early against measles, to avoid them acquiring the virus or passing it on to others.

A study of teenage girls with eating disorders has shown that reduced essential fatty acid levels returned to normal once the girls increased their weight to a healthy level.

Children who display multiple psychosomatic symptoms, such as regular aches and pains and sleep and appetite problems, are more than twice as likely to be experiencing physical abuse at home than children who do not display symptoms, according to a study in the March edition of Acta Paediatrica.

Children who started eating fish before nine months of age are less likely to suffer from pre-school wheeze, but face a higher risk if they were treated with broad spectrum antibiotics in the first week of life or their mother took paracetamol during pregnancy. Those are the key findings from a large-scale Swedish study published in the December issue of Acta Paediatrica. 

Clinicians from a leading UK children’s hospital have called for European countries to change the way they tackle the shortage of organ donations from children, after a review, published in the September issue of Acta Paediatrica, found a large number of legal, ethical and cultural barriers. 

Even healthy children as young as nine-years-old can start to show an increased risk of future heart problems if they are physically inactive, according to a study in the May issue of Acta Paediatrica.    

Children with chronic health conditions are 88% more likely to suffer physical abuse than healthy children, according to research in the March issue of Acta Paediatrica. They are also 154% more likely to suffer a combination of physical abuse and exposure to intimate partner violence than their healthy school friends.

Childhood stroke study identifies the contraceptive pill and smoking as risk factors

A major study of more than a million children has found strong links between receiving medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and limited maternal education, single parent families and welfare benefits, according to the June issue of Acta Paediatrica

Half of the mothers who took part in a study thought that their obese four or five year-old was normal weight, as did 39 per cent of the fathers, according to the February issue of Acta Paediatrica.