https://medicalxpress.com/pediatrics-news/ en-us Latest medical news and research in Pediatrics The age at which adolescents first start using social media may be more important to their mental health than whether they have a social media account at all, new UNSW Sydney research suggests. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-social-media-younger-linked-anxiety.html Mon, 31 Aug 2026 13:40:01 EDT news707395741 When a child has symptoms that could be pneumonia, doctors often listen to the child's lungs with a stethoscope to help make a diagnosis. But a new national study led by physician-scientists at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and PECARN finds that doctors may not always hear or interpret the same things when examining the same child, illustrating limitations of the physical examination. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-physical-exams-reliably-pneumonia-children.html Sat, 29 Aug 2026 17:00:03 EDT news706979284 A baby's brain is always listening, watching and learning—even when the world around it is chaotic and makes no sense. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-reveal-instability-infant-attention-brain.html Sat, 29 Aug 2026 12:31:53 EDT news707225484 The number of people who need prescription glasses to correct their vision is increasing each year as nearsightedness, or myopia, becomes more common worldwide. Current projections suggest cases could reach 50% by 2050, affecting nearly 5 billion people. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-special-aspherical-glasses-childhood-myopia.html Thu, 27 Aug 2026 09:01:04 EDT news707040031 Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have shown that specific brain cells respond differently to H3.3 K27M, a mutation in the histone H3.3 protein that drives many cases of diffuse midline glioma (DMG), depending on the cells' location in the developing brain. These findings help explain why DMG, a pediatric brain cancer commonly associated with this mutation, typically arises in the brainstem and other midline regions. The study was published today in Nature Communications. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-mutation-disrupts-cell-region-specific.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:00:09 EDT news706963021 A combination of training, quality improvement and leadership support in hospitals across four countries in sub-Saharan Africa is linked to fewer stillbirths and deaths among newborns during the first 24 hours of life, according to a study led by Karolinska Institutet and published in Nature Medicine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-maternity-linked-stillbirths-newborn-deaths.html Wed, 26 Aug 2026 05:00:06 EDT news706883333 Commercial baby foods in spouted pouches—intended to boost nutritional intake from the age of 6 months onward—are often more like sugary drinks and smoothies than nutritious food, finds an analysis of U.K. products, published online in Archives of Disease in Childhood. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-spouted-baby-food-pouches-sugary.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 18:30:02 EDT news706794347 Patients with sickle cell disease are often hesitant to undergo transformative gene therapy—the current lengthy process requires multiple hospital visits to collect enough stem cells. Researchers from Boston Children's Hospital have helped smooth the road to gene therapy with a new approach that collects enough of the patient's stem cells in a single hospital admission for most patients, improving the turnaround time for genetically altering and infusing the cells back into the patient. The long-term follow-up results of the first-in-human phase I pilot clinical trial were recently published in Blood. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-human-trial-stem-cell-delivery.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 16:00:06 EDT news706891861 Scientists at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital have discovered that removing the gene for Regnase-1 from engineered immune cells makes them more effective at treating relapsed osteosarcoma. There is a great clinical need for new therapies for childhood osteosarcoma, for which there are very few effective treatments for relapsed disease. The approach improved the cells' ability to control osteosarcoma growth and prevent metastasis to the lungs in preclinical models. The findings support the development of an early-phase clinical trial and were published today in Cell Reports Medicine. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-immune-car-cell-therapy-pediatric.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:20:01 EDT news706882441 Climate change is making droughts more frequent, prolonged and intense in many regions of the world, increasing the need to understand their effects on health. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-drought-pregnancy-preterm-birth-impaired.html Tue, 25 Aug 2026 11:40:06 EDT news706876741 Obesity doesn't look the same at age 15 as it does at age 45, and Duke University School of Medicine researchers are learning why. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation showed teenagers retain a degree of metabolic flexibility that's largely lost in adulthood. The study suggests that the way teenage bodies respond to excess weight is fundamentally different and potentially more reversible. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-obesity-adolescence-reversible-previously-thought.html Mon, 24 Aug 2026 13:20:09 EDT news706792201 Prenatal exposure to certain insecticides used in agriculture does not appear to be linked to social communication problems and other traits related to autism, a new study shows. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-pesticide-exposure-social-difficulties-common.html Mon, 24 Aug 2026 11:00:05 EDT news706535101 Teenagers who are subjected to online bullying are at greater risk of later emotional and behavioral difficulties, research suggests. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-cyberbullying-fuel-teen-mental-health.html Sun, 23 Aug 2026 14:00:01 EDT news706455718 A daily 20-milligram dose of zinc reduced infections by nearly 40% among Ugandan children younger than 5 with sickle cell anemia, according to new research led by scientists at the Indiana University School of Medicine and their study partners in Uganda. The findings, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), point to an affordable, well-tolerated strategy to decrease hospitalizations and save the lives of more children living with the genetic blood disorder. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-daily-mg-zinc-infections-children.html Fri, 21 Aug 2026 11:20:06 EDT news706525682 Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health (CVD) have identified key social and environmental factors that influence how climate change affects childhood diarrheal diseases in sub-Saharan Africa. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-08-climate-reshape-childhood-diarrheal-disease.html Thu, 20 Aug 2026 17:40:05 EDT news706456501