A study led by Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center researchers revealed that some Iraqi children diagnosed with leukemia paid a steep price for economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations against the Iraqi government. The U.N.-ordered sanctions were imposed in 1990 after the invasion of Kuwait and remained in effect until 2003. During the sanctions, there was a widespread shortage of medications, including antibiotics and chemotherapeutic drugs. ???We wanted to determine if the reduction in the availability of chemotherapeutic agents resulted in actual changes in health outcomes for Iraqi children diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia,??? said Haydar Frangoul, M.D., associate professor of Pediatrics and director of the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. Frangoul and colleagues from the Baghdad Medical College studied the medical records of 651 children diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) who were treated at the Children??™s Welfare Teaching Hospital in Baghdad. Chemotherapy shortage was immediately observed after the implementation of the U.N. sanctions in 1990 but there was an incremental decrease in chemotherapy availability during the study period.  »»»

A growing number of older U.S. children are being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, while diagnoses among younger children have held steady, government researchers said on Wednesday. The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found ADHD diagnoses among children aged 12 to 17 increased by an average of 4 percent a year from 1997 to 2006. The researchers found no significant change in the percentage of children aged 6 to 11 diagnosed with ADHD over the same period. The researchers used statistics from a national health survey that included data on 23,000 children aged 6 to 17 gathered in 2004, 2005 and 2006. »»»

(United Nations University) Resisting pressures to convert wetlands for agriculture, bio-fuels and hydro-electricity is vital to avoid destroying ecosystems that provide a suite of services essential to humanity, including safe, steady local water supplies, preserving biodiversity and the large-scale capture and storage of climate warming greenhouse gases, according 700 leading world experts concluding a week-long meeting in Cuiaba, Brazil. »»»