The juvenile criminal justice system is an important part of maintaining justice and protecting children's rights in criminal cases. Through literature study techniques, this paper aims to evaluate the juvenile justice system in Indonesia from the perspective of children in conflict with the law. The results of the study show that there are still some deficiencies in the juvenile justice system, such as the low quality of legal services and the minimal participation of children in the judicial process. Some efforts that can be made to improve the juvenile justice system include improving the quality of legal services, providing greater opportunities for children to be involved in the judicial process, and increasing alternative dispute resolution outside of juvenile justice. It is hoped that the results of this research can make a positive contribution to improving the juvenile justice system in the future.

Children with central nervous system (CNS) malignancies often suffer from high symptom burden and risk of death. Pediatric palliative care is a medical specialty, provided by an interdisciplinary team, which focuses on enhancing quality of life and minimizing suffering for children with life-threatening or life-limiting disease, and their families. Primary palliative care skills which include basic symptom management, facilitation of goals-of-care discussions, and transition to hospice can and should be developed by all providers of neuro-oncology care. This chapter will review the fundamentals of providing primary palliative care

Given that evaluating suspected child maltreatment is a challenging task, we aimed to begin to explore how laboratory test results may assist in its detection. Hence, we have examined biomarker differences between 137 children entering out-of-home care and 126 children living in their own homes. Each child entering Majorcan institutionalized care was randomly matched for gender and age with children living in their homes and the same health area. Concerning basic hematological and biochemical values, children placed in out-of-home care differed significantly from children remaining at home in four distinct ways. Children at care entry had significantly higher eosinophil counts than children at home; and also had significantly lower levels of transaminase, thyroid-stimulating hormone, triglycerides and LDL-Cholesterol than children living at home. Oxidative stress linked to anxiety disorders and underweight are common features found in children at entry into the care system. The present study shows a relationship between some underweight or oxidative stress biomarkers and the risk of entry into out-of-home care. Medical diagnoses require physicians to select and assemble relevant data from all available information. Accordingly, we should consider the implementation of laboratory checkups in order to identify the abused from the non-abused child better.

Objective: To determine demographic predictors and comorbidities in hospitalized children with conduct disorder. Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed using Nationwide Inpatient Sample (2012–2014). All patients were ≤18 years and cases with primary diagnosis of conduct disorder (N = 32345) and a comparison group with another psychiatric diagnosis (N = 410,479) were identified using ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes. A logistic regression model was used to generate the Odds Ratio (OR) between both groups. Results: Children <11 years old have five times greater chances of admission for conduct disorder than adolescent (OR 5.339). African American males are more likely to be admitted for conduct disorder. Children with conduct disorder from low-income families have a 1.5 times higher likelihood for inpatient admission compared to high-income families. These children have about eleven times higher odds of comorbid psychosis (OR 11.810) and seven times for depression (OR 7.093) compared to the comparison group. Conclusion: Conduct disorders are more debilitating for children and families than many providers realize. African American male under 11 years is at the highest risk for inpatient management for conduct disorder. These patients have a higher risk of comorbid psychosis and depression which may further deteriorate the severity of illness and require acute inpatient care.

We sought to calculate the extra social costs resulting from child abuse in residential care facilities (RCFs) for children with disabilities (CWD) in Japan. We distributed a survey to 260 residential facilities for CWD in 2020 and obtained responses from 91 facilities. Among the children admitted to these facilities, 23–67% were affected by child abuse. We estimated the extra costs to be an average of USD 647.7 million. This study is meaningful in that there are no existing official statistics or research findings on the extra costs of residential care due to child abuse in Japan.

Background: Producing, distributing or discussing child sexual abuse materials (CSAM) is often committed through the dark web in order to remain hidden from search engines and regular users. Additionally, on the dark web, the CSAM creators employ various techniques to avoid detection and conceal their activities. The large volume of CSAM on the dark web presents a global social problem and poses a significant challenge for helplines, hotlines and law enforcement agencies. Objective: Identifying CSAM discussions on the dark web and uncovering associated metadata insights into characteristics, behaviours and motivation of CSAM creators. Participants and Setting: We have conducted an analysis of more than 353,000 posts generated by 35,400 distinct users and written in 118 different languages across eight dark web forums in 2022. Out of these, approximately 221,000 posts were written in English and contributed by around 29,500 unique users. Method: We propose a CSAM detection intelligence system. The system uses a manually labelled dataset to train, evaluate and select an efficient CSAM classification model. Once we identify CSAM creators and victims through CSAM posts on the dark web, we proceed to analyze, visualize and uncover information concerning the behaviors of CSAM creators and victims. Result: The CSAM classifier, based on Support Vector Machine model, exhibited good performance, achieving the highest precision of 92.3\%, accuracy of 87.6\% and recall of 84.2\%. Its prediction time is fast, taking only 0.3 milliseconds to process a single post on our laptop. While, the Naive Bayes combination is the best in term of recall, achieving 89\%, and its prediction time is just 0.1 microseconds per post. Across the eight forums in 2022, our Support Vector Machine model detected around 63,000 English CSAM posts and identified near 10,500 English CSAM creators. The analysis of metadata of CSAM posts revealed meaningful information about CSAM creators and their victims, such as: (1) the ages and nationalities of the victims typically mentioned by CSAM creators, (2) forum topics where the CSAM creators assign their posts, and (3) online platforms preferred by CSAM creators for sharing or uploading CSAM. Conclusion: Our CSAM detection system exhibits high performance in precision, recall, and accuracy in real-time when classifying CSAM and non-CSAM posts. Additionally, it can extract and visualize valuable and unique insights about CSAM creators and victims by employing advanced statistical methods. These insights prove beneficial to our partners, i.e. national hotlines and child agencies.

Children’s right to participation in child protection decision-making is supported by moral imperatives and international conventions. The fragmented implementation of this right reflects an already-conflicted discursive terrain that attempts to incorporate both children’s agency and their need for protection. This article uses two key theoretical lenses to further examine this terrain: child welfare inequalities and cultural capital. These theories draw attention to how social inequities and cultural capital relating to culture and class affect how participation plays out. An unintended consequence of constructing children within a traditional liberal account of rights, within neoliberal and ‘child focussed’ policy paradigms, is the reduction of an acknowledgment of the culturally contested nature of an individualistic construction of children, excising children from their social backgrounds and promoting the notion of a ‘universal child’. With a particular focus on class, culture and professional paradigms, I argue that the ways children’s views are elicited, the content of those views and how they are interpreted, become subject to a set of professional assumptions that tend to take little cognisance of the social backround of children, including norms relating to class, ethinicity and the oppressive structural relations relating to those two factors. This process is shored up with concepts such as attachment theory, the ‘adultification’ of children of colour, the diminishing of Indigenous concepts of children and childhood, and the pre-eminence of the ‘concerted cultivation’ middle class parenting style. The child’s cultural worldview and manner of expressing it may clash with professional cultures that emphasise an ability for verbal expression, independence, and entitlement when negotiating preferences with representatives of powerful social institutions such as child protection systems. Many children may not comply with this expectation due to both cultural and class socialisation processes, and the histories of the oppressive functions of child protection systems. The unspoken power of child protection organisations that must engage in constant translation of children’s cultural capital to ensure participation, may instead better serve children’s participation aims by devolving authority to affected communities. Communities reflecting children’s own, may be better able to offer recognition to children and enable their participation more effectively.

Since the origin of COVID-19, everyone is getting accustomed to the new rules and regulations, travel restrictions and new lifestyle. Constant changes in the government advisories and the COVID-19 guidelines poses a real challenge for children to adapt to causing stress, anxiety and other mental health issues. Therefore, it is imperative to raise awareness about the challenges that Indian children are dealing with to help them better cope with this stressful and frantic time. The focus of this review is on various child-related problems that the Indian government is trying to tackle such as stress, depression, malnutrition, school closures, digital divide, child labor, child trafficking in context of mental health issues caused by them during COVID-19. Highlights:The reader will come to appreciate that: Digital-divide caused by shifting offline learning to online mode. Strategies implemented by Indian government to combat malnutrition Effect of COVID-19 lockdown on children suffering from mental disorders Child labor and trafficking and the strategies that aim to decrease child labor during the pandemic Educating the children appropriately regarding COVID protocols

Introduction: Guardians play a pivotal role in the management of childhood illness. Their responsibilities include home managing childhood illnesses and supporting continuity of care following healthcare facility treatment. Evidence has shown that guardians' negative experience in health care facilities when accessing under-five childcare services impacts their utilization of such facilities. Exploration of guardians' experiences is important in providing the evidence base necessary for quality childcare and reducing under-five morbidity and mortality. The study aimed to explore the experiences of guardians of children under five regarding the care received in Vhembe healthcare facilities. Methods: A qualitative approach using an interpretative phenomenology analysis (IPA) was used for this study. The study was conducted in eight primary healthcare facilities in the Vhembe district, with the highest headcount for children under five. Sixteen guardians were purposefully sampled for the study. Data analysis was done following the IPA steps of data analysis. Trustworthiness criteria were followed: credibility, confirmability, dependability, authenticity, and transferability. Ethical approval was obtained from the university and the province, followed by permission from the district and the operational managers before data collection. Results: The three emerging themes are associated with participants' positive experiences as they interfaced within the healthcare system: quality care, healthcare environment, support, and empowerment. The ten sub-themes were: timely service provision, availability of medicines, perceived nursing competence and professionalism, person-centred care, welcoming environment, effective communication, positive attitude of healthcare providers, guardians’ satisfaction with care received, guardians' involvement in childcare and community support. Conclusion: It is indeed not always bad. The participants in this study had positive care experiences, which is crucial in the optimal utilization of health care services, resulting in improved health outcomes.

This study presents a comprehensive investigation into the spectrum and determinants of child abuse and neglect in Nkpor-Uno, a community in Anambra State, Nigeria. Through a descriptive surveys design, the study explores various forms of abuse and neglect experienced by children, as well as the underlying factors contributing to these phenomena. The population for the study consisted of 1000 parents/ caregivers who are residents of Nkpor-uno. The sample for the study consisted of 100 respondents, purposive sampling techniques was used for the study. The questionnaire was a self-designed structured questionnaire. Data collected were analyzed using frequency, mean and standard deviation. Findings reveal alarming prevalence rates of child maltreatment, including physical, emotional, sexual abuse, and neglect. Socioeconomic factors such as poverty, parental substance abuse, family dynamics, and inadequate sex education emerged as significant contributors to child maltreatment. The study underscores the urgent need for targeted interventions and support systems to address the root causes of abuse and neglect and safeguard the well-being and development of children in Nkpor-Uno. By raising awareness, enhancing access to resources, and promoting positive parenting practices, we can strive towards building a safer and healthier environment for children, ensuring they are protected from harm and given the opportunity to thrive.

In this paper we take China’s one child policy as an example and investigate its environmental impact. We develop a model for an economy using a standard overlapping generation model extended with human capital, endogenous fertility, and changing life expectancy. To model the environmental impact of economic activities, we use a modified IPAT model. We show that China’s one child has a very strong positive impact on the environment, particularly if we consider the whole human legacy.

Background/Objectives: Early diagnosis of ASD a very important factor in improving the quality of life of people on the spectrum, but it still remains a major problem in Europe, especially concerning girls. In this study, we tried to answer the question of what factors affect the age of diagnosis in Poland. Additionally, we tried to establish the time between the first visit to the mental health center and the diagnosis in this population, and what factors affect its length. Methods: 77 children were randomly recruited among the patients who came to local MHC at the Child and Family Health Center in Sosnowiec. All participants were tested using the ADOS-2 protocol. In addition, the study used TAS-20 test and BDI. Results The mean age of the first enrollment in the MHC was 9.09 years for girls and 6.42 for the boys. The time needed to obtain a diagnosis from the first visit was consecutively 2.90 years and 4.29 years, but the difference was not statistically significant (p&gt;0.05). Obtaining a different psychiatric diagnosis did not affect the average time to diagnosis and the age of diagnosis. Conclusions: The results of the study indicate that the diagnosis of ASD is still a significant problem both in Poland and in the world. The long time needed to obtain the correct diagnosis, the frequent need to change diagnosticians in order to obtain it is a common problem. the diagnostic process should be flexible, and the diagnostician should always take into account the axial symptoms, but remain aware that "overdiagnosis" of ASD can also have harmful consequences for the child.

Child-friendly tourism is a tourism concept that focuses on the welfare and needs of children as tourism actors. This concept is an important part of developing a sustainable tourism city because children are the future generation who will continue their role in maintaining the sustainability of the tourism industry. This article discusses the importance of child-friendly tourism in the development of a sustainable tourist city and provides some examples of best practices in creating a safe, comfortable and educational tourism environment for children. This article also discusses some of the challenges and opportunities in implementing the concept of child-friendly tourism, including how to involve children in decision-making and increase community participation in creating a better tourism environment for children. By adopting the concept of child-friendly tourism, tourist cities can build a sustainable tourism environment and preserve natural resources and local culture, while also providing positive and memorable tourism experiences for children and their families.

Objectives: to assess the knowledge level of parents from the central region of Saudi Arabia about oral health and care of preschool children and its relation with sociodemographic variables, parents‟ self-perception toward their dental health, importance of teeth and frequency of dental visits. Methods: a random sample of 754 parents participated in this cross-sectional study and completed an internationally accepted questionnaire. Chi square test and logistic regression analysis were used to analyze the data (p<0.05). Results: mean knowledge score of the parents was 4.8 (out of 11). Less than 20% of the parents were knowledgeable about the best position for tooth brushing, the concentration of fluoride in a child‟s toothpaste, timing of first dental check-up, and best time to give a sugary snack. Mothers, parents with high educational level and family income, parents with positive attitude towards teeth and excellent self-perception of their dental health were significantly more likely to score higher (p<0.05). Conclusions: knowledge of parents about oral health and care of preschool children in the central region of Saudi Arabia was deficient. Gender, education level of parents, family income, attitude about teeth and self-perception of parents‟ own dental health were factors which influenced their knowledge. To improve parents‟ knowledge, role of health professionals should be improved and TV commercials directed toward the areas which had gaps in knowledge.

Parental phubbing behavior is a significant factor in predicting adolescent smartphone dependence, but prior research has predominantly focused on a unidirectional perspective from the child's viewpoint, overlooking potential perceptual differences between parents and their children regarding parental phubbing. Therefore, are there differences in the perceptions of parental phubbing between parents and their children? Based on the "Discrepancy-Maladaptive" hypothesis, the presence of perceptual discrepancies in family factors can lead to adverse developmental outcomes in children. Does the parent-child perceptual discrepancy in parental phubbing influence adolescent smartphone dependence? And what role does parent-child relationship play in this context? This study selected 728 families from a middle school in Wuhan, and surveys were administered to both children and parents. The findings reveal: (1) There exist significant parent-child perceptual discrepancies in parental phubbing. (2) Parent-child perceptual discrepancies in parental phubbing significantly positively predict adolescent smartphone dependence and negatively predict parent-child relationships, while parent-child relationships significantly negatively predict adolescent smartphone dependence. (3) The parent-child relationship plays a mediating role between parent-child perceptual differences in parental phubbing behavior and adolescent smartphone dependence.

Background: As a result of the pandemic, families and children have faced physical, emotional, and mental challenges. However, there has been little attention given to the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and child development. This systematic review aims to identify the impact of the pandemic on child development, globally. Methods: This study follows the PRISMA guidelines for the systematic review of 16 quantitative and qualitative studies conducted between 2020-2023. Results: This systematic review suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic played a crucial role in hindering child development in early childhood. Conclusion: Therefore, it is important to promote and implement the use of policies and strategies to overcome these obstacles.

This study was carried out in a qualitative research type and phenomenological design since it was aimed to determine the life experiences of the parents of deaf children. The study sample consisted of 20 parents of deaf children registered in a special education and rehabilitation center who spoke Turkish and were literate and did not have hearing loss. The data were collected through in-depth interviews in Istanbul between December and January 2022. Colaizzi's phenomenological interpretation method was used in qualitative data analysis. It was determined that parents of deaf children experienced anxiety, sadness, and happiness during diagnosis. They lacked information at first, but then they gained knowledge in the process, and it was not easy to accept this process. They stated that having a deaf child requires more time, responsibility, and effort than other children, this situation affects their social life, and they experience interpersonal conflicts. When parents were asked how they coped, they said they did it through prayer, social support, or time to themselves. It can be recommended to apply psychosocial intervention programs to the parents of deaf children, especially their mothers, from the first diagnosis process.

Background: Although widely believed to be safe for use in infants and children when used as directed, increasing evidence indicates that early life exposure to paracetamol (acetaminophen) may cause long-term neurodevelopmental problems. Further, recent studies in animal models demonstrate that cognitive development is exquisitely sensitive to paracetamol exposure during early development. In this study, evidence for the claim that paracetamol is safe was evaluated using a systematic literature search. Methods: Publications on PubMed between 1974 and 2017 that contained the keywords “infant” and either “paracetamol” or “acetaminophen” were considered. Of those initial 3096 papers, 218 were identified that made claims that paracetamol was safe for use with infants or children. From these 218, a total of 103 papers were identified as sources of authority for the safety claim. Results and Conclusions: A total of 52 papers contained actual experiments designed to test safety, and had a median follow-up time of 48 hours. None monitored neurodevelopment. Further, no trial considered total exposure to drug since birth, eliminating the possibility that the effects of drug exposure on long-term neurodevelopment could be accurately assessed. On the other hand, abundant and sufficient evidence was found to conclude that paracetamol does not induce acute liver damage in babies or children when used as directed.

Early childhood is important for future cognitive and educational outcomes. Programs overcoming barriers to engagement in early education for Indigenous children must address family cultural needs and target developmental delays. This systematic review identifies culturally adapted programs to improve cognitive, emotional and developmental delays among young children, in response to an identified priority of a remote Indigenous community. Five databases (the Cochrane Library, Embase, Medline, Scopus and CINAHL) were searched for English language papers in January 2018. Study quality was assessed and findings analysed thematically. Findings were presented to the community at an event with key stakeholders, to determine their inclusion and face validity. Seven relevant studies, published between 1997-2013, were identified by the researchers and each study was supported by the community for inclusion. Two studies focused on Native American children and five studies included children from non-Indigenous disadvantaged backgrounds. Findings were reported narratively across four themes: Storytelling to improve educational outcomes; Family involvement improved development; Culturally adapted Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to reduce trauma; Rewards-based teaching to improve child attention. Limited published research on culturally adapted and safe interventions for children with cognitive, emotional and developmental delay exists but these four themes from seven studies identify useful components.

To support the development of research evidence and behavioral health policy that aligns with the priorities of youth and families serviced in child and youth mental health systems, this project documents the service outcomes that caregivers value most. A diverse group of caregivers, representing six regions of the United States, participated in two rounds of virtual one-hour focus groups. In round 1, participants identified what they hoped to gain from using behavioral health services for themselves, their families, and their child and discussed what made services a positive experience for them. They then reported their top three most hoped for outcomes. In round 2, groups validated and refined summary findings from round 1. Caregivers prioritize service quality outcomes, primarily. They expressed a desire for an accessible, respectful, and supportive treatment environment underpinned by well-trained and culturally responsive professionals. Caregivers also desire seamless cross-sector provider collaboration and care transitions which integrate the insights and preferences of families and children themselves to craft a customized care plan. Priority outcomes not related to service quality included hoping to gain increased knowledge, resources, and tools and techniques to support the mental health needs of their children, help them improve their daily functioning, and develop more effective interpersonal communication skills. Caregivers also reported hoping to experience less stigma related to the mental health needs of their children and to achieve personal fulfillment for themselves and their children. Research and policies should prioritize and be designed to address the outcomes that matter to youth and families.

Autism in childhood is a heterogeneous disease with around 110 phenotypes. Around 800 genes are affiliated with autism including members of neuro-ligand, neurexin, cadherin, GABA receptors, SHANK gene families, mutated UBE3 A on chromosome 15 and SNORD 116 precursor interaction. A predominant 4:1 male to female ratio is found in autistic spectrum disorder. 50 per cent of all autistic children show chromosome deletions and duplications, these are often found on the 15th and 16th chromosome. Copy number repeat variants in DNA are also well described in pathogenesis of autism patients. There is an overlap with other neurodevelopmental syndromes like tuberous sclerosis, Williams-syndrome, Phelan McDermid syndrome and Sphrintzen syndrome. The hypothesis of the term “atypical connectivity” in different brain regions with partial under- and overconnectivity with reduced brain networking at the psychosocial level was described. Different hypothesis about the origin of autism in children were described. The hypothesis of early lack of basic trust, mercury intoxication and different aspects concerning the origin of this extraordinary disease of 2 percent of children were stated but not confirmed to date. Especially low immature production of IgF-1 by oligodendrocytes in the corpus callosum leads to slowing of the PI3K/AKT chain activation of myelination that Ig-F1 could play an important role in the origin of the disease. Synaptic dysfunction with hypomyelination and impaired impulse transmission seem to play an extraordinary role with under- and overconnectivity with reduced brain networking at the psychosocial level in autistic children. Functional underconnectivity is found in 5 different brain areas, prefrontal, parieto-occipital, motor, somatosensory and the temporal region. Functional overconnectivity is often present in temporo-thalamic regions. Recent research shed light on synaptic dysfunctions with disrupted normal impulse signaling. In this review the different neurochemical findings and the correlation of synaptic dysfunction in autistic children will be closely evaluated.

Emerging risk factors for childhood (<5 years) anemia cases in low-income countries have not been limited to COVID-19 and the spread of infectious diseases, hidden hunger, and other economic factors. Yet the effects of climatic factors, such as ambient temperatures, on child anemia have been in its infancy. In this population-based study, we study the region-specific associations between child anemia and ambient temperatures in 43 countries of Africa from 2000-2019. Using generalized linear regression models, we found that after adjusting for key covariates, the risk that temperatures pose on child anemia varies across the four African regions (Western, Eastern, Central, and Southern). This suggests that ambient temperatures have varying effects on child anemia by region. Other studies are needed in other low-income settings to expand our findings.

Background and Objectives: Infections are the most common and potentially life-threatening complications of the treatment of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). The aim of this study was to determine epidemiological, clinical and microbiological characteristics of infections in pediatric patients with ALL. Materials and Methods:  Twenty-three children (16 male and 7 female, mean age 5.9 years [range 1.3 to 12.2 years]) with ALL, treated at the Division of Hematology, Oncology and Clinical Genetics, Department of Pediatrics, Clinical Hospital Center Rijeka, Croatia, from January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2020, were included in the study Results: One hundred and four infectious episodes (IEs) were reported (average 4.5 IE per patient). IEs were more frequent in the intensive phases of antileukemic treatment. Neutropenia was present in 48 IEs (46.2%) with a duration greater than 7 days in 28 IEs (58.3%). The respiratory tract was the most common infection site (48.1%). We documented 49 bacterial (47.1%), 4 viral (3.9%), 4 fungal (3.9%) and 10 mixed isolates (9.6%), while in 37 IEs (35.6%) pathogen was not isolated. The most common causes of bacteremia were coagulase-positive staphylococci. The most frequent empirical therapy was third- and fourth-generation cephalosporins, followed by piperacillin/tazobactam. Modification of the first-line antimicrobial therapy was performed in 56.9% of IEs. Granulocyte-colony stimulating factor was administered in 53.8% of IEs, and intravenous immunoglobulins in 62.5% of IEs. One patient required admission to the intensive care unit. No infection-related mortality was reported. Conclusions: ALL patients have frequent IEs. Close monitoring, identification of risk factors, rapid empirical use of antibiotics in febrile neutropenia, and timely modification of antimicrobial therapy play a key role in reducing infection-related morbidity and mortality in children with ALL.

With this study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of digital game addiction tendencies of preschoolers (36-72 months) on children's depressive symptoms.We conducted the research in a virtual environment with mothers who have 747 preschool children. Predictive evaluation was performed using simple regression analysis between the mean scores of (DGATS) and (CDSAS). In the regression analysis, it was determined that there was a strong positive correlation between the (DGATS) total score average and the (CDSAS) total score average (R=0.52,R2=0.27,p<0.05). Accordingly, digital game addiction tendency explains 27% of children's depressive symptoms. When the standardized beta coefficient and t values are examined, it can be said that digital game addiction tendency is a significant predictor of children's depressive symptoms.

Wound healing in the pediatric population is known to be a challenge and poorly studied. Split-thickness skin grafts, full-thickness skin grafts and flaps overlap their applications with the growing field of cellular and tissue-based therapies. However, their role in pediatric reconstruction has yet to be defined. The Kerecis® Omega3 wound patch, derived from decellularized codfish skin, has garnered attention due to its preserved microscopic architecture resembling the human extracellular matrix. This acellular dermal matrix acts as a scaffold, fostering dermal cell and capillary adhesion while harnessing omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids for granulation acceleration and antimicrobial effects. This study presents a comprehensive review and surgical protocol for utilizing Kerecis® fish skin in pediatric wound care. The research embraces a case series involving five patients with diverse wound locations. The Kerecis® Omega3 wound patch underwent meticulous application and careful monitoring. The results highlight an average time of 48.6 days for complete epithelialization, yielding favorable outcomes with no hypertrophic scarring and mild retraction. Notably, this innovative approach may eliminate donor site morbidity and improve pain control, promising a novel avenue for pediatric wound management.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a hopeful tool for helping parents with different parts of raising children by giving them personalized tips, evidence-based methods, and timely solutions. This paper talks about the difficulties and possibilities of using AI to help parents. It also talks about the possible benefits and its impact on child psychology. There are a lot of ways that AI can help parents, from giving personalized advice that fits the needs of each family to intervening quickly when it spots early signs of developmental problems or parenting stress. AI makes it easier for parents to find tools, workshops, and interactive modules that are based on research. This gives parents the knowledge and trust they need to make choices about their child's growth that are based on facts. Also, AI-powered support can connect parents with similar problems, creating a sense of community and making it less embarrassing to ask for help with parenting or mental health. But there are a few problems that need to be carefully dealt with before AI can be used to help parents in a responsible and effective way. Data privacy and security are very important to protect families' safety and well-being. Important things to think about are the ethical use of data, transparency, and educated permission. Also, the accuracy and dependability of AI programs are very important when it comes to giving good advise and suggestions. To make sure everyone gets fair and equal help, efforts must be made to find and get rid of flaws. Also, AI shouldn't replace human sense and experience; it should add to them. When parents rely too much on AI, they might forget how important human contact and mental support are. To accommodate different parenting styles and views, it is important to be sensitive to culture and circumstances. In conclusion, AI-powered parenting support has a lot of promise to help parents be better parents and help children grow and learn. AI can be a useful tool for helping parents if it can solve problems related to data privacy, ethics, reducing bias, and working together with humans. Finding a balance between technology progress and human connection is important if AI is to be used to its fullest potential to give parents more power and help children grow in the best way possible.

Family-Centered Care (FCC) as a philosophy is defined as a care provider that emphasizes and involves the important role of the family. However, there are several obstacles in implementing family center care for children where parents have different perceptions from health workers. Parents are angry when they are involved in a job they consider to be a nurse's job and the attitude of nurses prevents parents from participating. This difference in perception causes the implementation of Family Center Care (FCC) has not been carried out optimally, this has an impact on discomfort during treatment. Along with the not yet optimal implementation of family center care when providing care to children, further discussion is needed regarding the philosophy of child nursing with a family center care approach. The reasons for the importance of implementing family center care include building a collaborative system, focusing on family strengths and resources.

Parenting has been robustly associated with offspring psychosocial development, and these effects are likely reflected in brain development. However, the claim that parenting influences offspring brain development in humans, as measured by structural and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), is subject to numerous methodological limitations. To interpret the state of the parenting and brain development literature, we review these limitations. Four limitations are common. First, most literature has been cross-sectional. Where longitudinal, studies rarely included multiple assessments of brain structure or function, precluding measurement of actual brain development. Second, parenting has largely been measured via selfor parent-report, as opposed to observational assessment. Third, there has been a focus on extreme forms of developmental adversity which do not necessarily lie on a continuum with normative parenting. Fourth, although not a limitation per se, studies have generally focused on negative as opposed to positive parenting behaviours. While not all studies are subject to all these limitations, the study of parenting in relation to offspring brain development is in its infancy.

This small article examines the pivotal roles of redundant and degenerate neural networks in the brain across three critical dimensions: evolutionary development, early childhood neural formation, and their implications in neurological diseases. Redundant networks, characterized by parallel neural pathways with similar functions, provide a foundation for cognitive resilience, ensuring continuity of brain functions despite damage or developmental anomalies. Degenerate networks, comprising structurally varied but functionally equivalent pathways, contribute to cognitive flexibility and adaptability, essential for innovative problem-solving and learning. From an evolutionary perspective, these networks have been instrumental in the brain's adaptation to diverse environmental challenges, facilitating cognitive maximization and the development of complex behaviors. The genetic underpinnings and environmental influences that shaped these networks are explored, highlighting their contribution to the evolutionary success of the human species. In the realm of early childhood development, the formation and reinforcement of these networks are crucial. The brain's plasticity during this period leads to the establishment of robust redundant networks and versatile degenerate networks, shaped significantly by environmental stimuli and learning experiences. This developmental phase lays the groundwork for cognitive abilities and resilience to neurological challenges later in life. Furthermore, the paper delves into the implications of these networks in the context of brain diseases. The disruption of the equilibrium between redundancy and degeneracy is linked to various neurological conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, stroke and Huntington's disease. Understanding the roles and balances of these networks offers insights into the pathophysiology of these diseases and potential therapeutic approaches. This review underscores the significance of redundant and degenerate neural networks in the evolutionary context, their critical formation during early childhood, and their profound impact on brain health and disease. It highlights the need for further research into these networks to enhance our understanding of brain function and to develop targeted interventions for neurological disorders.

To determine the influence of child abuse on academic performance from the perspective of teachers of a private school from Piura, 2024. Method: The present study is an applied, non-experimental design with a continuous qualitative approach. The technique used was the survey and as an instrument the questionnaire on knowledge of child abuse with 12 questions, with a population of 20 teachers. Results: For the statistical analysis was used through Microsoft Excel 2023 and IBM SPSS software, in addition the Shapiro Wilks statistical test was used, the results show that 85% of respondents, from their perspective, neglect has a high level of influence on academic performance, 65% of respondents, from their perspective, state that psychological maltreatment has a high level of influence on academic performance and 50% of respondents, from their perspective, determine that physical maltreatment has a high level on academic performance. Conclusions: The value of p=0.553 &gt; 0.05, therefore, it is concluded that according to the perspective of the teachers of a private school from Piura, there are no significant changes in the academic performance of students who suffer from child maltreatment.

This study investigated the relationship between aluminum adjuvant vaccines and the prevalence of 4 childhood diseases (Autism, Allergies, Asthma, ADD/ADHD) using data from the 2020-2021 National Survey of Children's Health (NSCH) [1] and the Centers for Disease Control National Immunization Survey (CDC NIS) [2]. The study found an association with aluminum adjuvant dosage and the prevalence of each disease studied (Autism, Allergies, Asthma, ADD/ADHD) through a weighted regression analysis of disease prevalence against the summed likelihood of aluminum adjuvant vaccine uptake.

BACKGROUND: Functional constipation can lead to painful defecations, fecal incontinence, and abdominal pain, significantly affecting a child's quality of life. Treatment options include non-pharmacological and pharmacological approaches, but some cases are intractable and require alternative interventions like neuromodulation. A subtype of neuromodulation, called Transcutaneous Posterior Tibial Nerve Stimulation (TPTNS), comprises electrical stimulation at the ankle level, by means of electrodes fixed to the skin. TPTNS is a minimally invasive, easy-to-apply technique that can potentially improve constipation symptoms in the pediatric population by stimulating the sacral nerves. AIM: To evaluate the clinical results and applicability of TPTNS as an adjuvant treatment for children and adolescents with functional constipation. METHODS: Between April 2019 and October 2021, 38 patients diagnosed with functional constipation according to the Rome IV Criteria were invited to participate in the study. The study followed a single-center, uncontrolled, prospective cohort design. Patients received TPTNS for 4 or 8 weeks, with assessments conducted immediately after the periods of TPTNS and 4 weeks after the end of the intervention period. The data normality distribution was determined by the Shapiro-Wilk test. Wilcoxon test and Student's t-test for paired samples were used to compare quantitative variables, and the McNemar test was used to compare categorical variables. RESULTS: Of the 38 enrolled patients, 28 children and adolescents with intractable function constipation completed the study, receiving TPTNS for 4 weeks. Sixteen patients (57.1%) extended the intervention period for 4 extra weeks, receiving 8 weeks of intervention. TPTNS led to significant improvements in stool consistency, frequency of defecation, and bowel function scores, with a reduction in abdominal pain. Quality of life across physical and psychosocial domains showed substantial enhancements. The quality of life-related to bowel habits also improved significantly, particularly in lifestyle, behavior, and embarrassment domains. The positive effects of this intervention are seen relatively early, detected after 4 weeks of intervention, and even 4 weeks after the end of the intervention. TPTNS was well-tolerated, with an adherence rate of approximately 78%, and no adverse effects were reported. CONCLUSION: TPTNS is an adjuvant treatment for intractable functional constipation, improving bowel function and quality of life. The effects of TPTNS were observed relatively early and sustained even after treatment cessation.

This research mapped significant social networks of victims of childhood sexual abuse, identifying relationships between childhood trauma and social bonds in adult life. Ten adult women, aged between 20 and 40 years, in psychiatric care for the consequences of trauma suffered in childhood participated in the research. For data collection, the map of significant social networks was used and analyzed through the structure, functions and attributes of the bonds. The network is composed of people from the Friendship, Family, Community, Work/Study and Health Teams group. The networks of friendships, family, co-workers or studies play a predominant role of emotional support, while the Health Teams also offer emotional support, but primarily provide clinical support in overcoming trauma and its consequences. The network of relationships has specific functions that maintain psychosocial integrity and help women to overcome the abuse suffered.

Purpose: To explore parents’ perceptions of the educational intervention programme regarding their children’s postoperative pain management. Design and Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted. Thirty-two parents whose children underwent inpatient elective surgery were recruited from the two intervention groups (received an educational booklet and a video, with or without an hour of face-to-face teaching session) for this qualitative evaluation of the intervention. Participants were asked to comment on the content and delivery methods of the intervention via individual face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was used to identify themes from the data. Results: Three themes were generated from 32 participants’ interview data: current pain management practices, experiences and benefits of the educational intervention, and suggestions to improve pain management. Conclusions: Our findings suggested that the educational intervention in children’s postoperative pain management was helpful for parents and their children. However, it is necessary to improve educational materials and equip healthcare professionals with non-pharmacological pain relief methods. Practice Implications: Our findings reveal the current challenges in extensively adopting non-pharmacological pain relief methods. Healthcare professionals can do more to routinely integrate pharmacological and non-pharmacological pain management strategies in relieving pain effectively. Future research could develop technology-based programmes to increase ease of access. Trial Registration Number: ISRCTN24910957.

The study proposes planning independent children's mobility through geoinformation technologies for listening to children. This research assumes that children’s values and expectations must be considered in city planning. A bibliographic review identifies 15 indicators which make spaces safe and attractive for children to circulate and play. Thematic maps of the indicators are prepared, integrated by Multicriteria Analysis by Weights of Evidence, according to the hierarchical importance of each variable. The definition of weights considers the opinion of children and technicians. Consultation with children is carried out by Mapping Volunteers (VGI), Consultation on Hierarchy, Geodesign of Ideas for the area and Artistic Workshop. In the technical study, the query applies the Delphi method. It uses the VGI – Volunteered Geographic Information – web-based platform, where children record places of topophilia and topophobia, while technicians map the presence of 15 indicators. The set of information is made available on a web-based platform of SDI – Spatial Data Infrastructure, in which there are resources for a Geodesign workshop when ideas for the area are elaborated through negotiation and co-creation. The product is a transformation design for the area through urban design and parameterisation of uses.

2003 it is shown that after the Chernobyl accident, childhood leukemia by single age and year of birth in the 0-4y cohort increased significantly in Wales and Scotland combined in the period 1986-1990 compared with controls born 1970-1985 and 1991-1994. Relative risk RR = 1.41; 95% CI 1.20<RR<1.65; p = 0.00004. These exposure periods were chosen because whole body Caesium-137 monitoring had demonstrated that internal exposures persisted for more than 4 years. The dose-response exhibits saturation and reversal, interpreted as biological censoring effects in the developing individual.

Background: The respiratory syncytial virus infection (RSV) spread has been unusually high during 2022 and increasing trends have been documented We aimed to assess the survival experience of children hospitalized due bronchiolitis by laboratory-confirmed RSV. Methods: A nationwide and retrospective cohort was conducted in Mexico and data from 436 children aged 5 years and younger, with symptoms onset from August 2021 to November 2022, were analyzed. Survivor functions and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were computed by using the Kaplan-Meier method. Results: The survival rates were high, particularly within the first three weeks of admission. The 3-day survival was 99.8% (CI 95% 98.4-99.9%) and went to 98.9% (CI 95% 96.5-99.7%), 97.5% (CI 95% 91.9-99.3%), 86.7% (95% CI 48.2-97.2%), and 69.4% (95% CI 24.2-91.0%) on days 7, 14, 21 and 28 of hospital stay, respectively. We documented 5 fatal outcomes, and the mortality rate was 2.1 per 1,000 person-days. Conclusions: We analyzed a large set of pediatric patients with bronchiolitis by RSV and the presented results contribute to achieving a better understanding of the in-hospital evolution of this disease.

1) Background: A significant proportion of child laborers are compelled to work in exploitative environments, experience both deteriorating health and financial loss. The present study sought to determine the factors affecting child labour and the characteristics of their working environment. 2) Methods: A questionnaire survey was conducted with 80 child labourers aged 5 to 17 years. Alongside descriptive statistics, a newly devised technique known as Influencing Causes Index (ICI) was administered and tested. 3) Results: The startling demographic findings reveal that peak share of child labourers are young children (12-14 years) and 32.5% child laborers had never attended school. The thorough assessment of determinants reflects that not only poverty, but schooling expenses and lack of access opportunity to primary schools are also the top-ranked push factors to trigger children towards labour. Around 72.5% of children work for over 8 hours a day. A significant proportion of participants received no leave, training, or access to hygiene facilities. The existing pattern of employment and working conditions resulted in musculoskeletal pain and dermatological infections among child labourers (p&lt;0.05). 4) Conclusion: This research suggests that income measures for households, and an education programme for both children and parents would expedite the abolition of child labour.

Infant obesity has become one of the most serious global health challenges of our time. The combined prevalence of overweight and obesity has rapidly increased worldwide during the last two decades, especially in some developing countries where obesity is reaching levels on a par with some industrialized countries, or even higher. This fast growth has occurred especially in countries in the midst of rapid social-economic transitions. Most international comparisons focus on the adult population while analyses focusing on the child population are more limited. Using the methodology developed by Phillips and Sul [1], this paper studies the worldwide evolution of infant body mass index (BMI), overweight and obesity prevalence for a large sample of countries during the period 1975-2016. Our results indicate that the figures for BMI or the prevalence of obesity in different countries do not converge, while the opposite is the case for overweight prevalence in children. Furthermore, there is a non-linear relationship between obesity and income or human capital, indicating that low and middle-income countries require a strong initiative for health policies targeting obesity prevention.

This article sets out to deconstruct and challenge the psychologised and pathologising approach that has come to dominate child protection practice in Aotearoa-New Zealand and comparable societies in neoliberal times. Within a risk and protection focused paradigm circumstances and behaviours associated with material deprivation are construed as indicators of heightened danger and harm as opposed to a means of better understanding family life. In this way, although poverty may be classified as an issue that is worthy of attention in the realm of broader economic and social policy, structural inequality is rendered largely irrelevant to the practice of statutory child protection. This article sets out to trouble this construction. It will be argued that understandings of how the effects of material inequality are played out in the lives of children and their families are critical to the development of more effective child protection social work. This ‘life-world’ is generally populated by young women parenting in poverty. Poverty exacerbates the everyday struggle of parenting - it shames and dis-empowers; reducing confidence and perceptions of competence (Gupta, 2015). A paradigm shift is needed. Child protection policy and practice needs to re-engage with the every-day struggles that accompany the lives of socially marginalised families in increasingly stratified late capitalist society. The future of social work in child protection depends on it.

In Mexico, 1.9% of child mortality among children aged 3 to 15 years is attributed to waterborne gastrointestinal diseases (WGD). This study employs a generalized bivariate logit econometric model to simulate the relationships between mortality risks and seven explanatory variables. Based on the model results and sensitivity analysis of the estimated parameters, a set of policies was designed to reduce the likelihood of child mortality. The proposed strategy involves im-plementing the following public policies, primarily targeting communities with extreme and high marginalization: increasing access to drinking water, improving housing conditions, expanding parental basic education coverage, and providing nutrition and healthcare to children from an early age. The findings reveal that children who speak an indigenous language face a mortality risk from WGD that is three times higher than those who do not, while children who receive medical services have a 29% lower risk of mortality compared to those who do not have access to them. It is recommended to offer free medical care in indigenous languages within high-marginalization communities. The combined impact of these policies is expected to signifi-cantly reduce child mortality due to WGD.

Background/Objectives: This study aimed to compare croup management patterns between pediatricians and emergency medicine (EM) physicians to enhance pediatric emergency care and inform the training of future specialists. Methods: A retrospective review of medical records was conducted for 1,676 children diagnosed with croup who visited a single pediatric emergency department (PED) from March 2019 to February 2023. Patient characteristics, management patterns, and the impact of physician specialty on emergency care were analyzed. Results: EM physicians used injected dexamethasone monotherapy more frequently, whereas pediatricians favored combined use of nebulized epinephrine and dexamethasone. Pediatricians also prescribed oral antibiotics and corticosteroids at discharge more often. The appropriate use of nebulized epinephrine based on the Westley Croup Score was significantly higher in the EM physician group. Despite these differences, there were no significant disparities in PED length of stay or revisit rates within 48 hours. Conclusions: EM physicians adhered more closely to clinical guidelines for croup management. These findings underscore the need for standardized, evidence-based pediatric emergency care and provide valuable insights for training programs in this field.

Abstract: This study aimed to evaluate the long-term impact of paediatric dentistry programmes on children and adolescents to reduce oral health inequalities. It measures and assesses the improvement effects of paediatric dentistry programmes on the oral health of children and adolescents as part of the efforts to decrease oral health disparities in this age group. It included 406 individuals who participated in student and paediatric dentistry programmes between 2013 and 2019 at screening facilities in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul. Frequency analysis was conducted for demographic characteristics, and binary logistic regression analysis was performed to identify factors influencing the prevalence of dental caries as the dependent variable. Data were analysed using PASW Statistics with the statistical significance level set at α=0.05. Regarding oral health indicators based on the frequency of participation in paediatric dentistry programmes for children and adolescents, participants with seven or more sessions had lower prevalence rates of dental caries, malocclusion, and periodontal disease than those with only one session. Second, when comparing oral health indicators in paediatric dentistry programmes between primary and adolescent age groups, individuals under continuous management showed a decrease in permanent teeth affected by dental caries, dental caries prevalence, and malocclusion prevalence (excluding primary school age). Third, binary logistic regression analysis revealed significant influences (p

Sleep is of vital necessity for health, it has a restorative and protective function for children and adolescents with chronic conditions and their families. The purpose was to identify the scientific production on sleep patterns in children and adolescents with chronic conditions and their families. This integrative review was developed in March and June 2022, of the MEDLINE, Web of Science, CINAHL and PSYCInfo. The articles included were original papers published be-tween January 2007 and mid-2022. Excluded were review studies that did not evaluate sleep and whose participants did not have chronic conditions or were not children, adolescents and/or their families. The searches returned 814 abstracts. After exclusions, 47 studies were selected to be read in full; of these, 29 were selected and were grouped empirically into four categories: major alterations in sleep patterns of children and adolescents with chronic conditions; the relationship between sleep disorders and symptoms in children and adolescents with chronic conditions; impaired sleep patterns of families of children and adolescents with chronic conditions; sleep alterations and their relationship with other problems in families of children and adolescents with chronic conditions. All studies showed sleep pattern impairment in children and adolescents with chronic conditions and their families.

This study investigated how positive (e.g., incentives) and negative (e.g., restrictions) reinforcement used in vaccination promotional messages and trust in government impact parental vaccine perceptions and decisions on vaccinating their children during a large-scale infectious disease crisis. Two hundred and eighty-six parents of unvaccinated teens participated in a 2 (reinforcement: positive vs. negative) × 2 (trust in government: high vs. low) between-subjects experimental survey. Positive reinforcement (e.g., gift cards for the vaccinated) was more effective for parents with low trust in the government to improve their attitudes and intentions toward child vaccination, while parents with high trust in the government were unaffected by reinforcement types. To the best of our knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the effects of both positive and negative reinforcement on vaccination perceptions and behavioral intentions through a controlled experiment and is the first study to do so in a large-scale infectious disease crisis setting. This research is expected to help public health professionals better prepare for and manage virus-induced public health crises in the future.

The relationship between child psychology and the widespread usage of mobile devices in the modern day is examined in "The Mobile Dilemma: Child Psychology and the Era of Technological Dependence." The abstract serves as a brief synopsis of the work, highlighting its important ideas and arguments. Concerns concerning the effects of excessive time spent on mobile devices on children's mental health and development have arisen in this age of technology dependency. The essay opens by pointing out the importance of investigating the psychological effects of kids' exposure to mobile gadgets. The effects of mobile phone addiction on learning, memory, and social and emotional health are investigated. The neurodevelopmental implications are explored further in the abstract, with a focus on the impact of mobile technology on brain plasticity and the formation of the developing brain. It offers advice on how to establish appropriate limits for children's screen time, encourages the development of digital literacy, and promotes responsible behavior.The pros and cons of using mobile devices in the classroom are also examined, along with their effects on students' ability to study and the risks and difficulties that could arise from implementing such a strategy. The emotional and social impacts of mobile device addiction are discussed in the abstract. This includes the impact on one's social life, empathy, ability to communicate, and sense of self-worth. The abstract also stresses the importance of interdisciplinary efforts involving parents, teachers, psychologists, and legislators to combat mobile device addiction through intervention and preventative techniques. Future directions are highlighted, with a focus on topics such as mobile technology development, digital well-being, privacy protection, mental health implications, screen time limits, digital literacy, and the impact of cultural and socioeconomic variables.

It is difficult to obtain necessary information accurately from Social Networking Service (SNS) while raising children, and it is thought that there is a certain demand for the development of a system that presents appropriate information to users according to the child's developmental stage. There are still few examples of research on knowledge extraction that focuses on childcare. This research aims to develop a system that extracts and presents useful knowledge for people who are actually raising children, using texts about childcare posted on Twitter. In many systems numbers in text data are just strings like words and are normalized to zero or simply ignored. In this paper, we created a set of tweet texts and a set of profiles created according to the developmental stages of infants from "0-year-old child" to "6-year-old child". For each set, we used ML algorithms such as NB (Naive Bayes), LR (Logistic Regression), ANN (Approximate Nearest Neighbor algorithms search), XGboost, RF (random forest), decision trees, and SVM (Support Vector Machine) to compare with BERT, a neural language model, to construct a classification model that predicts numbers from "0" to "6" from sentences. The accuracy rate predicted by the BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) classifier was slightly higher than that of the NB, LR, ANN, XGboost, RF, decision trees, and SVM classifiers, indicating that the BERT classification method was better.

Benefits of baby swimming have been established, but there is limited knowledge about the methodologies used by practitioners. To address this knowledge gap, this study aimed to categorize and classify the equipment and environmental used in baby swimming programs worldwide. A descriptive categorical content analysis approach was employed to analyse videos of baby swimming programs obtained from YouTube. The framework created was validated for interrater reliability, and a pilot study was conducted to classify videos from different countries based on the equipment and environment used. Results indicated that the physical environments observed were pool tanks and swimming pools with and without depth reduction zones, while the equipment used included assistive devices, toys, and clothes. This study represents a significant first step in the development of a comprehensive tool to systematize and characterize the methodologies used in baby swimming programs globally.

It is difficult to obtain necessary information accurately from Social Networking Service (SNS) while raising children, and it is thought that there is a certain demand for the development of a system that presents appropriate information to users according to the child's developmental stage. There are still few examples of research on knowledge extraction that focuses on childcare. This research aims to develop a system that extracts and presents useful knowledge for people who are actually raising children, using texts about childcare posted on Twitter. In many systems numbers in text data are just strings like words and are normalized to zero or simply ignored. In this paper, we created a set of tweet texts and a set of profiles created according to the developmental stages of infants from "0-year-old child" to "6-year-old child". For each set, we used Support Vector Machine (SVM), and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), a neural language model, to construct a classification model that predicts numbers from "0" to "6" from sentences. The accuracy rate predicted by the BERT classifier was slightly higher than that of the SVM classifier, indicating that the BERT classification method was better.

In this study, we analyse if in-utero exposure to Ramadan fasting period is negatively associated with child nutrition? The data for the analyses come from a retrospective assessment of 924,198 children from 103 demographic and health surveys (DHS) across 56 countries during the period 2003-2020. Considering the month-long Ramadan exposure as a natural experiment, we implement an intent-to-treat framework, comparing outcomes among individuals who were exposed to Ramadan at any time in-utero to those who were not exposed. Our findings do not show significant evidence to conclude that in-utero exposure to Ramadan fasting period is negatively associated with child nutrition. On the contrary, except for stunting in children who had in-utero exposure to Ramadan during the first trimester, among Muslims, we find slightly better nutritional outcomes among children exposed in-utero to Ramadan period. The better nutritional outcomes among children exposed in-utero can be attributed to high nutritious food intake and better hygienic practices during holy months of Ramadan compared to usual months. Our main results are robust to multiple robustness checks.

The MLL gene is a site of frequent rearrangement in acute leukemia with multiple fusion partners, but MLL-SEPT6 rearrangement is rare in clinical leukemia practice, and only 13 cases have been reported. We describe the case of an acute myelogenous leukemia child with MLL-SEPT6 rearrangement whose age of onset and accompanying gene mutations differs from previous reports. Considering the poor prognosis of leukemia children with MLL-SEPT6 rearrangement and the unsatisfactory results of existing treatments, the study of this case may provide new theories for diagnosis and treatment of MLL-SEPT6-associated childhood acute leukemia.

In some parts of Nigeria, many girls do not attend school, and among those sent to school, many still drop out early. This and other socio-cultural factors affect girls psychologically. There is no doubt that girls need consistent love and tutoring to guide them through the turbulent teen years and beyond. They need a mentor who acts as a friend and a role model. The Mobile-based Mentoring Platform seeks to leverage on mobile technology's affordances to focus on the needs of the girl-child, such as improvement in academic achievement, guidance in career choice, development of self-concept, and esteem. The girl-mentees comments revealed that using the platform provided them frequent access to mentors and access to learning opportunities. The challenges they faced include epileptic internet network, intrusions by parents, and others. Therefore, this paper examined the challenges and benefits of mentoring girls via a mentoring platform.

(1) Background: There is robust evidence of an attention bias-anxiety relationship in children, but lack of appropriate methods has limited the number of studies with children younger than 8 years old. This study used eye-tracking as a measure of overt attention in young children. The aim of this study was to assess anxiety related attention bias in children aged 4 to 8 years. Age was considered as a moderator and the influence of effortful control was investigated. (2) Method: A community sample of 104 children were shown pairs of happy-neutral and angry-neutral faces. Growth curve analyses were used to examine patterns of gaze over time. (3) Results: Analyses revealed moderation by age and anxiety, with distinct patterns of anxiety-related biases seen in different age groups in the angry-neutral face trials. Effortful control did not account for age related effects. (4) Conclusions: Results support a moderation model of the development of anxiety in children.

The national rate of obesity in US Hispanic/Latinos exceeds all other major ethnic subgroups and represents an important health disparity. Plant-based diet interventions that emphasize whole plant foods with minimal processing and less refined grains and sugar have shown have shown great promise in control of obesity, but there is a paucity of data translating this treatment effect to disparity populations. The objective of our study was to evaluate the efficacy and scalability of the Healthy Eating Lifestyle Program (HELP) – a hospital-based, family centered, culturally tailored, plant-based diet intervention for Hispanic/Latino pediatric obesity patients and their families. Our evaluation methods included: 1) a quasi-experimental, one group, longitudinal study to measures changes in BMI at 0, 6, and 18 weeks of follow-up, and 2) A stakeholder analysis consisting of six key informant interviews of HELP program staff. We found a significant decrease in body mass index across all adults (-0.2 kg/m² p=0.0047), that was much stronger in men. For children ages 5-12 years, there was also a significant decrease in BMI Z score from pre- to post- intervention (p=0.04). Program strengths were the cultural tailoring of the plant-based diet choices, and allowing a tiered approached that did not require adherence to strict vegetarianism. Our pilot study findings from HELP raise the possibility that incorporating plant-based diet choices into the treatment of pediatric obesity patients and their families can be an effective addition to a culturally responsive care model.

Assessment of cardiac function is the leading parameter when evaluating the state of the cardiovascular system of patients undergoing chronic hemodialysis. The aim of the paper: to assess the state of the cardiovascular system of these patients using new sensitive echocardiography and Doppler techniques and thus advance the prevention of cardiovascular disease.Method: Twenty children with end-stage renal insufficiency on chronic hemodialysis and twenty healthy controls underwent echocardiographic monitoring using standard Doppler and tissue Doppler imaging. Structural and functional changes in the left ventricle were evaluated.Results: Patients on hemodialysis had significantly greater left ventricular mass indices compared to the controls (p<0.001). The patients on hemodialysis had preserved systolic function – their fractional shortening, ejection fraction and Sm (systolic myocardial velocity) did not differ significantly compared to the controls (p>0.05). Early diastolic function in children on hemodialysis was also preserved: the E/A and Em/Am ratio did not differ significantly from the control group (p>0.05). Children on hemodialysis exhibited impaired late diastolic function (compliance index), that is, considerably higher E/Em compared to controls (p<0.00). Myocardial Performance Index values showed statistically significant elevation in children on hemodialysis compared to the control group (p<0.001).Conclusion: Tissue Doppler in tandem with conventional Pulsed Doppler can provide additional information on left ventricular filling pressures (E/Em) in children on hemodialysis. It is therefore recommended to perform routine measuring of Em waves and the E/Em ratio, not only in order to evaluate myocardial relaxation and ventricular filling pressures, but primarily to stratify risk and provide a prognosis.

In recent years, more attention has been paid to behavioral problems in children. However, for the most part, risk factors for these problems have yet to be determined. The current prebirth cohort study investigated the relationship between maternal calcium consumption during pregnancy and behavioral problems in five-year-old Japanese children. Subjects were 1199 mother-child pairs. Dietary intake was assessed using a diet history questionnaire. Emotional problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity problems, and peer problems were assessed using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for four behavioral problems under study according to the quartile of calcium intake, with the lowest quartile as the reference. Adjustment was made for maternal age, gestation at baseline, region of residence at baseline, number of children at baseline, maternal and paternal education, household income, maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy, maternal alcohol intake during pregnancy, maternal smoking during pregnancy, child's age, child's birth weight, postnatal secondhand smoke exposure at home during the first year of life, and breastfeeding duration. Higher maternal calcium intake during pregnancy was independently associated with a decreased risk of childhood emotional and hyperactivity problems; the adjusted ORs between extreme quartiles (95% CIs, P for trend) were 0.46 (0.27–0.79, 0.01) and 0.60 (0.37–0.97, 0.046). No such inverse associations were observed for childhood conduct problems or peer problems. Maternal calcium intake during pregnancy may decrease the risk of childhood emotional and hyperactivity problems.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of cystoscopic injection of Botulinum-A toxin (BTX) in the detrusor wall in the treatment of children with decreased bladder capacity due to neurogenic bladder. The prospective, randomized non placebo controlled trial is conducted in our institution since year 2006 with the approval of the local Ethics Committee. 556 cystoscopic injections of BTX were performed in 141 children with neurogenic bladder in age 1 to 18 years. In all cases decreased bladder capacity and bladder overactivity with urine incontinence were estimated. The pre-and post-treatment evaluations included determination of urinary continence status, bladder function in frequency/volume chart of catheterized urine and in urodynamic studies. Parameters measured in urodynamic investigations included maximal cystometric capacity, detrusor reflex volume, maximal detrusor pressure. Parameters were analyzed before the cystoscopy and during the follow-up examinations in 5 age groups. Values of all measured parameters improved significantly and equally after therapy in every from 5 age groups. The results obtained from the study confirmed that endoscopic administration of BTX improves function of urinary bladder in children with neurogenic bladder, and the method represents an alternative approach to conservative treatment and surgical augmentation.

Many emotionally disturbed children who have been maltreated and are legally separated from their parents or primary caregivers live in group homes and receive compulsory education. Such institutions provide various special intervention programs. Taiko, a Japanese style of group drumming, is one such program because playing drums in a group may improve children’s emotional well-being. However, evidence for its efficacy has not been well established at the biological level. In this study, we measured salivary levels of oxytocin (OT), a neuropeptide associated with social memory and communication, in three conditions (recital, practice, and free sessions) in four classes of school-aged children. Following the sessions, OT concentrations showed changes in various degrees and directions (no change, increases, or decreases). However, the mean OT concentration changes after each session increased, ranging from 112% to 165%. Plasma OT concentrations were equally sensitive to drum playing in school-aged boys and girls. However, the difference between practice and free play sessions was only significant among elementary school boys aged 8-12 years. The results suggest that younger boys are most responsive to this type of educational music intervention.

Family support is offered to Australian parents of young children using a mix of targeted and universal child and family health services. A feature of the universal services is the ability for nurses to work in partnership with families and to offer flexibility depending on need. This model of progressive universalism relies on the voluntary engagement of families, including families with complex needs. In this study, the capacity to engage and retain families, including those at risk for child maltreatment and family violence, was examined. Child and Family Health Nurses (n=129) participated in a pragmatic, multilevel mixed-methods study using the McCurdy and Daro (2001) Integrated Theory of Parent Involvement. A questionnaire was used in the first phase of the study to collect the quantitative data. Focus groups were then held with 27 participants recruited from phase one. Both homogeneous and heterogenous practices identified from the questionnaire were the focus of the discussions. Three phases of practice were identified and described: enrolment, retention and conclusion of the nurse-parent relationship and are presented and discussed in this paper. The retention of families with complex needs relies on flexible, advanced, and multidimensional nursing practices.

Introduction: Childhood obesity is becoming an emerging public health issue as it is associated with increased morbidity and premature deaths. Determinants like the child’s household characteristics, maternal weight before the preconception stage, and maternal weight in childhood are studied. There is no study available to understand the association between overweight women of reproductive age and overweight children under five years of age. Studying these determinants to understand the problem can help in framing policies to intervene in the issue. Methods: The data for the study was collected from the National Family Health Survey 5 (NFHS5). It has been sub-grouped into urban and rural categories. The percentage of women with high-risk Waist-Hip-Ratio (WHR) and the percentage of overweight women were independent variables whereas the percentage of overweight under-five children was dependent. Simple linear regression, multiple linear regression, and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis were done for the collected data. Results: Study shows the percentage of overweight women has increased by 4.1%, and the percentage of overweight children has increased by 2% during the NFHS5 (2019-21) compared to NFHS4 (2015-16). Pearson correlation coefficient (R) is 0.5662 and Ꞵ-coefficient for multiple linear regression is 0.1397 for central obesity in women (%) and percentage of overweight children. Conclusion: Central obesity in women is more common than the overweight. Overweight in women as well as in children under five is increasing. Central obesity in women shows a moderate positive relation with overweight in children under five years.

Millions of children in developing countries face preventable deaths due to inadequate vaccination and malnutrition, in part due to insufficient monitoring and the absence of official identification. A reliable fingerprint recognition system can be a practical solution to address this issue. However, the scarcity of longitudinal fingerprint datasets for young children leads to unresolved questions regarding the earliest age for fingerprint biometric use, the frequency of enrollment required for reliable recognition, and the methods to accommodate agerelated changes. A few recent studies introduced high-resolution fingerprint scanners and showed promising recognition performance for young children. However, these studies were conducted on a small dataset over a shorter period with limited diversity; further evaluation of their finding is essential. This study assessed the effectiveness of a high-resolution contactless scanner in a controlled, diverse longitudinal dataset of children (0-15 years). Our results indicate that infants can be enrolled at five days old and reliably recognized after two months with a TAR= 100% @ FAR = 0.1%, and children aged 4-15 years can be recognized after one year with a TAR= 98.72% @ FAR = 0.1%.

Thin people who undergo implant insertion into the chest wall face a high risk of implant exposure to the external environment. Five months after an 8-year-old boy underwent implantable cardioverter-defibrillator (ICD) implantation in a subcutaneous pocket in the left anterolateral chest wall to manage long QT syndrome, ICD replacement became necessary owing to exposure risk from distal and lateral thinning of the ICD pocket. Pocket rupture and exposure would increase the risk of infection; therefore, we performed ICD removal and primary pocket closure. Two weeks later, a new suprafascial pocket was created, acellular dermal matrix (ADM) was attached to the inner wall to prevent ICD protrusion, and a new ICD was inserted. One year postoperatively, the ADM was engrafted, and no complications were observed. A thin subcutaneous layer increases the risk of ICD implantation complications. Inner wall strengthening with ADM can help prevent pocket rupture.

Although child-centred care is increasingly referred to within the nursing literature, a clear definition of child-centred care and clarity around the concept is yet to be achieved. The objectives of this review were to examine: 1) What constitutes the concept of child-centred care in healthcare? 2) How has the concept of child-centred care developed? 3) What is the applicability of child-centred care and what are its limitations? and 4) How does the concept of child-centred care benefit and inform children’s healthcare? In total, 2984 papers were imported for screening, following removal of duplicates and screening, 21 papers were included in the scoping review.The findings suggest that child-centred care is an emerging, ambiguous, poorly defined concept; no clear consensus exists about what constitutes child-centred care. Although it seems antithetical to argue against child-centred care, little robust evidence was identified that demonstrates the impact of, and benefit from, child-centred care. If child-centred care is to be a sustainable, convincing model to guide practice and compete with other models of care it needs to establish robust evidence of its effectiveness, impact on children and their families as well as the wider impacts on the healthcare system.

The current study aimed to examine the relationship between demographic variables within the family context and parenting behaviors among adolescent mothers (including affection, responsiveness, encouragement, and teaching). These factors were correlated with communication, problem-solving abilities, and personal-social development in typically developing infants. The study included a sample of 79 Chilean adolescent mother-child dyads with children aged 10 to 24 months. Communication, problem-solving, and personal-social development were assessed using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire-3, along with a demographic information questionnaire. Parenting behaviors (affection, responsiveness, encouragement, and teaching) were observed using the Spanish version of Parenting Interactions with Children: Checklist of Observations Linked to Outcomes. The findings indicated that employed mothers and those who had not dropped out of school had children with better problem-solving skills. Additionally, children residing with their fathers and female children exhibited superior performance in communication, problem-solving, and personal-social development. Maternal responsiveness was associated with communication and problem-solving, while maternal encouragement was linked to improved problem-solving skills. Maternal teaching was connected to communication, problem-solving, and personal-social development. The study emphasized the significance of parenting and sociodemographic factors among adolescent mothers in influencing their children's development.

The study follows the interaction between the individual and the social context regarding the development of adolescents protected in residential houses from the child protection system in Iasi County, Romania. Starting from the evidence that in situations of providing relatively identical material and social resources, the results obtained by these children vary greatly, we examine how the meaning (understood mainly as purpose and mattering) can constitute a developmental resource. Considering theoretical models and previous research, the study aims to describe, through a qualitative approach, how these young people see themselves and the external environment (family and residential care), how they project their future (their purpose and objectives), and how these constructions and perceptions can influence their quality of life and social integration. We conducted three focus groups with 35 adolescents and young people (the ages 13-21) protected in and for different periods in residential houses (period 1-20 years). The results highlighted that a specific meaning is reconfigured as compensatory when affected by a trauma or adverse external event and thus can be a resource for resilience. On the other hand, the research highlighted that only the existence of goals alone is insufficient to generate action, and the unrealistic meanings given to own persons, experiences, and resources can be dangerous.

SCARED-C instrument (the child version, 41 items) is used for screening anxiety in children between 8 to 18 years old and has been first introduced by Birmaher & collab. in 1995, with good psychometric data - internal consistency from α =.74 to .93 - and good discriminative validity indices in the original versions (1997, 1999). Since then, many countries have adopted the scale, for its utility in identifying five subsets of anxiety disorders (subscales): somatic/panic disorder, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, social phobia, and school avoidance. The present study contains the first Romanian translated and adapted version of the SCARED-C instrument on a community sample of 477 children (8-18 years old) from Mureș county schools. The instrument showed moderate to good internal consistency (α Cronbach from to .63 to .91 for the total scale) and good test-retest reliability (.70) on a subset of 85 children sample. A confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) was conducted to test the factor structure of the Romanian version of SCARED-C; results showed that SCARED-C has good psychometric properties to be used for screening anxiety in Romanian children and adolescents. The implications for using SCARED-C in dental practice are discussed. Future studies need to be conducted for exploring convergent and discriminative validity of the instrument and the sensitivity to current DSM-V criteria. Application on a dental pediatric sample is also required.

This prospective observational study aimed to describe voriconazole administrations and trough concentrations in patients with Child-pugh class C clinically, and to investigate the variability of trough concentration. A total of 144 voriconazole trough concentrations from 43 Child-pugh class C patients were analyzed. The majority of patients (62.8%) received adjustments. The repeated measured trough concentration was higher than the first and final ones generally (median, 4.33 vs. 2.99, 3.90 mg/L). Eight patients with ideal initial concentration later got supratherapeutic with no adjusted daily dose, implying accumulation. There was a significant difference in concentrations among the six groups by daily dose (P=0.006). The bivariate correlation analysis showed that sex, CYP2C19 genotyping, daily dose, prothrombin time activity, international normalized ratio, platelet, and Model for end-stage liver disease score were significant factors for concentration. Subsequently, the first four factors mentioned above entered into a stepwise multiple linear regression model (variance inflation factor &lt; 5), implying that CYP2C19 testing makes sense for precision medicine of Child-pugh class C cirrhosis patients. The equation fits well and explains the 34.8% variety of concentrations (R^2 = 0.348). In conclusion, it needs more cautious administration clinically due to no recommendation for Child-pugh class C patients in the medication label. The adjustment of the administration regimen should be mainly based on the results of repeated therapeutic drug monitoring.

Adventurous play, defined as exciting, thrilling play where children are able to take age-appropriate risks has been associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. Despite this, it remains unclear what factors might aid or hinder schools in offering adventurous play opportu-nities. The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesise findings from qualitative studies on the perceived barriers and facilitators of adventurous play in schools. A total of nine studies were included in the final synthesis. The review used two synthesis strategies: a meta-aggregative syn-thesis and narrative synthesis. Findings were similar across the two syntheses, highlighting that key barriers and facilitators were: adults’ perceptions of children; adults’ attitudes and beliefs about adventurous play and concerns pertaining to health; and, safety and concerns about legis-lation. Based on the findings of the review, recommendations for policy and practice as provided to support adventurous play in schools.

When participants in a statistical learning paradigm are asked to learn from two incompatible or competing inputs, they often fail to learn from one or both inputs. This study presents the results of two experiments that were both completed by one group of typically developing four-year-old children. One experiment targeted word-medial consonant patterns (phonotactics), whereas the other targeted strong-weak and weak-strong stress patterns (prosody). The order of the experiments was critical for learning outcomes in the phonotactics experiment: When children learned phonotactics first, their production accuracy increased following exposure to a high frequency input. When children learned phonotactics second, however, their production accuracy dropped when they were exposed to the high frequency input. Results from the prosody experiment were inconclusive, with limited evidence of any learning effect. Overall, the results suggest that children may conflate learning experiences, and patterns learned from an initial experimental input compete with patterns in a subsequent experiment. When considering natural language acquisition, the results suggest that an isolated episode of learning may lead to generalizations that are incompatible with later input, and possibly, with larger patterns in the language.

This study analysed trends of first-time patients visiting the paediatric psychiatry clinic in a university hospital. The medical records from 2009 to 2016 of first-time patients visiting the Kyung Hee university hospital were reviewed, focusing on children in grades 1–12. We analysed the prevalence rate of psychiatric disorders per 100,000 general populations by gender and grade, and the characteristics of patients who sought outpatient care more than three times. The study included 1,467 participants, of which 931 were males (63.5%). The number of male patients per 100,000 populations significantly decreased from 4.14 in 2009 to 2.03 in 2016. While hyperkinetic disorders had the highest prevalence in males, neurotic disorders were most frequent in females. Prevalence of disruptive behaviour disorders in males and mental retardations in females decreased significantly during the study period. The factors affecting continuity were being female, studying in grades 7–12, and diagnosis of depressive, hyperkinetic, and tic disorders. Physicians should consider the new paediatric patients’ gender, grade, and expected diagnosis from their first visit to improve treatment compliance.

The study presents a comparison of the common Child Restraint Systems (CRS) which reduces the value of dynamic loads affecting the child's body during car accidents. The analyzed systems were: child seats, Combi Booster Seats, and straps adjusting vehicle seat belts to children's sizes. The effectiveness of the analyzed devices was assessed on the basis of experimental tests carried out in the accredited laboratory approving the Child Restraint Systems. The tests were carried out accordingly to the new Regulation No. 129 UN / ECE. Whether the tested devices meet the guidelines of the new Regulations No. 129 despite approval in accordance with Regulation No. 44. Based on the research result, better safety parameters of some new solutions dedicated to children’s safety could be observed. The final results show that there is still space for improving the safety of young vehicle passengers.

The study presents a comparison of the common Child Restraint Systems (CRS) which reduces the value of dynamic loads affecting the child's body during car accidents. The analyzed systems were: child seats, Combi Booster Seats, and straps adjusting vehicle seat belts to children's sizes. The effectiveness of the analyzed devices was assessed on the basis of experimental tests carried out in the accredited laboratory approving the Child Restraint Systems. The tests were carried out accordingly to the new Regulation No. 129 UN / ECE. Whether the tested devices meet the guidelines of the new Regulations No. 129 despite approval in accordance with Regulation No. 44. Based on the research result, better safety parameters of some new solutions dedicated to children's safety could be observed. The final results show that there is still space for improving the safety of young vehicle passengers.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to describe potential factors contributing to neonatal mortality in Takeo, Cambodia through assessment of verbal autopsies collected following newborn deaths in the community. The mortality review was nested within a trial of a behavioral intervention to improve newborn survival, and was conducted after the close of the trial, within the study setting. The World Health Organization standardized definition of neonatal mortality was employed, and two pediatricians independently reviewed data collected from each event to assign a cause of death. Results: Thirteen newborn deaths of infants born in health facilities participating in a community based, behavioral intervention were reported during February 2015–November 2016. Ten deaths (76.92%) were early neonatal deaths, two (15.38%) were late neonatal deaths, and one was a stillbirth. Five out of 13 deaths (38.46%) occurred within the first day of life. The largest single contributor to mortality was neonatal sepsis; six of 13 deaths (46.15%) were attributed to some form of sepsis. Twenty-three percent of deaths were attributed to asphyxia. The study highlights the continuing need to improve quality of care and infection prevention and control, and to fully address causes of sepsis, in order to effectively reduce mortality in the newborn period.: The study highlights the continuing need to improve both intrapartum and postnatal quality of care and infection prevention and control, and to fully address causes of sepsis, in order to effectively reduce mortality in the newborn period.

Obesity has been identified as an emerging health concern for Chinese American children; however, very little is known about diets in Asian American children. The objective of our paper was to describe the dietary intakes of urban Chinese American schoolchildren using a state-of-the-art approach for dietary assessment. Data for this analysis come from the Food Journal Project 2017, a pilot and feasibility study conducted by a multi-sector collaboration. Children aged 8-12 (n=83) completed two dietary assessments using a food diary from January-June 2017. Children were then interviewed using the food diary as a guide and dietary data were entered into the online ASA24 system by study staff. Chinese American children were identified using surname, and were compared to non-Chinese peers with respect to nutrient intake and the Healthy Eating Index 2010 (HEI-2010). Chinese American children consumed more sodium dense diets, more protein, and less sugar compared to non-Chinese children. With regards to the HEI-2010, Chinese American children had less favorable whole grains and sodium scores; and more favorable seafood protein and empty calories scores compared to non-Chinese children. Sodium reduction and increasing whole grain intakes may be warranted in this group, but should be verified with additional studies.

Background: Detection of small proportion of serious bacterial infections (SBI) with potentially life threating course in a large group of children with fever admitted to emergency department (ED) is still complicated. Measurement of immature granulocytes (IG) percentage may be used as a marker of bacterial infections. The aim of the study was to evaluate whether the IG percentage is a useful additional predictive marker of SBI. Methods: This study included 258 children with febrile infections admitted to the ED. Clinical follow-up, microbiological and radiological tests were used as reference standards for the definition of SBI. Study population was categorized into two groups: (i) infected patients with no suspicion of SBI (n = 75); (ii) patients with suspicion of SBI (n = 183). IG percentage, white blood cell count (WBC) and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were analyzed from the first routine blood samples at hospital admission. Results: A statistically significant difference in IG percentage levels was observed in children with SBI and those without - the mean IG percentage was 1.2% for the SBI group, 0.3% for those without SBI. The cutoff level of IG percentage to predict SBI was 0.45 (84% specificity, 66% sensitivity, 90% positive predictive value). We combine variables and evaluate their additive values. The sensitivity of WBC to detected SBI improved from 74% to 85% when IG percentage was added to the prediction models. When CRP, WBC and IG percentage were combined, the sensitivity to predict SBI increased to 93%, the specificity to 86%. (95% CI 77–93%). Receiver operator characteristic analysis to predict SBI showed an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.80 for IG percentage. Conclusion: Addition of IG percentage to traditionally used markers of SBI as WBC and CRP may help to identify children with serious bacterial infections. Furthermore IG percentage can be rapidly obtained from the traditional full blood count without any extra sampling and costs.

A Europe-wide outbreak of invasive pediatric Group a streptococcal infections (iGAS) began in fall 2022. Here we report the evolution of GAS hospitalizations in children and adolescents during the second outbreak year in 2023-2024 at a tertiary center in Switzerland. Using prospective monitoring of all in-patient GAS cases below 16 years of age including those with iGAS, we compared case frequencies and clinical characteristics in three time periods (2013-2020; 2022-2023; 2023-2024). Annual GAS hospitalizations increased from a median of 25 case (range 11-28) in 2013-2020 to 89 and 63 cases, respectively, in 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. iGAS cases evolved similarly (2013-2020, 4 cases (3-8); 2022-2023, 32 cases; 2023-2024, 21 cases). The decline in cases from 2022-2023 to 2023-2024 included all types of GAS organ involvement except suppurative infections in the head area, which remained largely unchanged (48 vs. 45 cases). Pleural empyema declined from 13 to 7 cases, possibly explained by a poor overlap of the GAS and influenza curves, respectively, in 2023-2024 compared to 2022-2023. These data document the prolongation of the GAS outbreak into its second winter season in 2023-2024, however with a decline of iGAS, pleural empyema, skin and soft tissue infection and infections of bone, joint and muscle.

Background: Currently, a Dolutegravir (DTG)-based regimen is administered to women on option B plus to prevent mother-to-child transmission (MTCT) of the virus. However, its effect on reducing MTCT of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) among exposed infants over the previously used Efavirenz (EFV)-based regimen is unknown. Objective: This study aimed to compare the effects of DTG-based and EFV-based regimens on the MTCT of HIV among exposed infants in southern Ethiopia. Methods: A retrospective before-after study design was employed from March to May 2023 among 958 mother-infant pairs (479 on EFV-based and 479 on DTG-based regimens) enrolled in the prevent mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) care from September 2015 to February 2023. The outcome variable was the HIV infection status among the exposed infants. A log-binomial model was employed and the proportion was computed to compare the incidence of MTCT of HIV in both groups. The risk ratio (RR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) was calculated to assess the predictor variables. Results: Mothers on a DTG-based regimen were approximately 44% (adjusted risk ratio (aRR): 0.56; 95% CI: 0.44, 0.70) less likely to transmit HIV to their infants than those on an EFV-based regimen. In addition, poor/fair adherence to antiretroviral therapy (ART) (aRR: 5.82; 95% CI: 3.41, 9.93), home delivery (aRR: 3.61; 95% CI: 2.32, 5.62), mixed feeding practice (aRR: 1.83; 95% CI: 1.45, 2.3), and not receiving antiretroviral prophylaxis (aRR: 3.26; 95% CI: 1.6, 6.64) were found to increase the risk of MTCT of HIV infection, whereas older maternal age (aRR: 0.93; 95% CI: 0.9, 0.96) was a protective factor.Conclusion: The Dolutegravir-based regimen significantly reduced MTCT of HIV among exposed infants compared to the EFV-based regimen. Thus, DTG-based first-line ART regimen supplementation should be sustained to achieve global and national targets for zero new infections in HIV-exposed infants.

The prevalence of stunting in young Indonesian children is the highest among Southeast Asian Nations, and is associated with poor growth during the prenatal and early postnatal periods. A maternal mentoring program was developed for Indonesian women to improve birth outcomes. A cluster randomized control trial (CRCT) was conducted in three sub-districts of the Special Re-gion of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. A total of 384 eligible participants were randomly allocated to either intervention (received maternal mentoring program and standard care; n=189) or control (received standard care only; n=195). The maternal mentoring program provided preconception health education; health monitoring; and text message reminders for preconception women. Fetal growth was measured between gestational weeks 27-30 using estimated fetal weight generated from ultrasonographic measurement. Birth weight was measured within 24 hours of birth. A structured questionnaire captured women’s’ demographics, pregnancy readiness, and body mass index (BMI. After adjustment, fetal weight was 14% (95% CI: 5.1-23.0) higher in the intervention group than in the control group, and the average weight-for-length Z-score at birth was 0.16 (95% CI: 004-0.30) higher in the intervention group than in the control group. A maternal mentoring program was associated with improved fetal growth and birth weight in this population.

While persons with schizophrenia find steady employment difficult to sustain, many of the women take on the most difficult task of all – motherhood. The aim of this paper is to review the challenges of motherhood in this population and the treatment strategies needed to keep mothers and children safe, protecting health and fostering growth. This is a narrative review reflecting the author’s life experience and a non-systematic search of the recent literature. Topics added are the stigma against motherhood in the context of schizophrenia, mothers’ painful choices, issues of contraception, abortion, and child custody, fostering and kin placement of children, the effects of antipsychotics, specific perinatal delusional syndromes, and parental supports. Recommendations are to work collaboratively with mothers who struggle with serious mental illness, take note of their strengths as well as their failings, offer a wide array of family services, monitor closely for safety, and appreciate the challenges these women daily face.

The growth in online child exploitation material is a significant challenge for European Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs). One of the most important sources of such online information corresponds to audio material that needs to be analyzed to find evidence in a timely and practical manner. That is why LEAs require a next-generation AI-powered platform to process audio data from online sources. We propose the use of speech recognition and keyword spotting to transcribe audiovisual data and to detect the presence of keywords related to child abuse. The considered models are based on two of the most accurate neural-based architectures to date: Wav2vec2.0 and Whisper. The systems are tested under an extensive set of scenarios in different languages. Additionally, keeping in mind that obtaining data from LEAs is very sensitive, we explore the use of federated learning to have more robust systems for the addressed application, while maintaining the privacy of the data to LEAs. The considered models achieved a word error rate between 11% and 25%, depending on the language. In addition, the systems are able to recognize a set of spotted words with true positives rates between 82% and 98%, depending on the language. Finally, federated learning strategies show that they can maintain and even improve the performance of the systems when compared to centralized trained models. The proposed systems sit the basis for an AI-powered platform for automatic analysis of audio in the context of forensic applications within child abuse. The use of federated learning is also promising for the addressed scenario, where data privacy is an important issue to be managed.

(1) Background: The subject of athlete burnout is often discussed among sports psychologists. Interventions to reduce this phenomenon are still under investigation with follow-up. Thus, the purpose of the current meta-analysis was to examine psychological interventions that have already been carried out to decrease or eliminate burnout syndrome in young athletes. (2) Methods: Scientific electronic databases were searched and five published studies published between January 2002 and June 2022, which met the criteria, were selected. This systematic review and meta-analyses followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing the risk of bias was used to assess the studies' quality. The metafor a package of the R statistical program was used to perform the analysis. (3) Results: Cognitive-behavioral therapy as well as mindfulness-based interventions effectively reduced most dimensions of burnout. Moreover, online interventions were significantly more beneficial in this reduction (4) Conclusions: There should be more high-quality studies on the effectiveness of psychological interventions in reducing burnout. Mainly because it leads to tremendous physical and psychological problems for athletes and their coaches and therefore requires particular interventions and prevention strategies.

The aims of the study are: a) Describe the reactogenicity of WHO-approved two mRNA (Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna) and two non-RNA vaccines (Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinovac) among lactating mother and baby pairs; and b) compare and contrast the reactogenicity between mRNA and non-mRNA vaccines. A cross-sectional, self-reported survey was conducted amongst 1784 lactating women who received COVID-19 vaccinations. The most common maternal adverse reaction was a local reaction at the injection site; the largest minority of respondents, 43.7% (780/1784), reported experiencing worse symptoms when receiving the second dose compared to the first dose. There were no major reported adverse effects or behavioural changes in the breastfed infants. Among the respondents who received non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccinations, a majority reported no change in lactation but those who did more commonly reported an increase in milk supply, decrease in milk supply and pain in the breast. The more commonly reported lactation changes (fluctuations in breastmilk supply and pain in the breast) for the non-mRNA vaccines were similar to that of respondents who received mRNA vaccines. Our study, with a large cohort and wide geographical and racial mix, further augments earlier reported findings that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for breastfeeding mothers and her children.

Exploring the contribution of proximal family risk factors on SLC6A4 DNA methylation in children with a history of maltreatment

This review critically assesses the body of research about Measles-Mumps-and-Rubella (MMR) vaccine attitudes and uptake in the United Kingdom (UK) over the past 10 years. We searched PubMed and Scopus, with terms aimed at capturing relevant literature on attitudes, uptake, decision-making, and beliefs about the MMR vaccine. Two researchers screened for abstract eligibility and after de-duplication 934 studies were selected. After screening, 40 references were included for full-text review and thematic synthesis by three researchers. We were interested in the methodologies employed, and grouped findings by whether studies concerned: (1) Uptake and Demographics; (2) Beliefs and Attitudes; (3) Healthcare Worker Focus; (4) Experimental and Psychometric Intervention; (5) Mixed Methods. We identified group and individual level determinants for attitudes, operating directly and indirectly, that influence vaccine uptake. We found that access issues, often ignored within the public “anti-vax” debate, remain highly pertinent. Finally, a consistent theme was the effect of misinformation and lack of knowledge or trust in healthcare, often stemming from the Wakefield controversy. Future COVID-19 immunisation campaigns for children should consider both access and attitudinal aspects of vaccination, and incorporate a range of methodologies to assess progress, taking into account socio-economic variables and the needs of disadvantaged groups.

Background: This study aims to explore children’s social information processing (SIP) as an ex-planatory mechanism in the link between parent-child relationship and children’s learning diffi-culties; (2) Methods: The sample included 115 kindergarteners (62 girls; 53 boys; Mage = 68.5 months, SD = 6.04), their parents and the school teacher. Parents reported on relationship quality with the child and teachers reported on children’s learning difficulties and school achievements. Children’s SIP was assessed with the social information processing interview – preschool version (3) Results: Mother and father relationship quality with the child associated with children’s SIP, however, only the father's but not the mother's quality of relationship with the child was associ-ated with children’s learning difficulties and school achievements. Children’s SIP mediated this latter link; (4) Conclusions: Parents’ relationship quality with the child and children’s SIP are pertinent factors in children’s learning in the early years. The father-child relationship seem to be a strong determinant of children approach to learning and achievement and may have long last-ing effect on children's mental health

With the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, a new stage of the pandemic commenced, with new challenges ahead. During the coming months, countries will be implementing their COVID-19 vaccination programs depending on their implementation of vaccine availability and its prescription on risk stratification. Although children will not benefit from active immunization programs, now, with the beginning of the era of the anti-COVID19 vaccines, the suffering of children can no longer be ethically tolerated or neglected. The time has come to provide specific lasting strategies for children living in the COVID-19 era. Here we propose a child-focused indirect COVID-19 vaccination strategy.For better or worse, children depend on their natural caregivers (adults) and the rest of society for their well-being and achieving their full potential. We believe that including in the priority categories also those adults in close contact with children could ensure a safety net of child protection.A child-focused vaccination strategy would allow the faster return to "normality" for children and their families. Such an approach would not only enable the reopening and continuity of essential services for children but also would allow adults to return to their routine economic/productive activities.

Background: To investigate any associations between new clinical policies implemented because of the COVID-19 pandemic and harm to patients. Methods: Retrospective data collection of incidents and complaints reported through Datix®, and the Patient Liaison Service respectively. The setting was the Family Health division in a University teaching hospital in the UK. Primary and secondary outcome measures included; Proportion of incidents reported on Datix from 23/3/20 to 25/5/20, compared to the period from 23/3/19 to 29/5/19. COVID-19 related incidents and complaints and association with newly published guidelines or pathways from 23/3/20 to 29/5/20. Results: There was no significant difference in the proportion of overall patient activity resulting in incidents reported on Datix in 2020 (2.08%) compared to 2019 (2.09%), with 98% resulting in no/low harm in 2020. Three incident categories had increases in relative proportions of incidents including terms “COVID” or “Corona” compared to incidents that did not; “Child death”, “delay/failure to treatment and procedure” and “information governance”. One of the child deaths was a miscarriage and we were unable to link the second child death to a change in clinical policy at this stage. We were only able to link 2 COVID-19 associated incidents with a pathway or procedural change (one to the Children's Emergency Department admission pathway and the second to the introduction of virtual antenatal clinics). Eighteen complaints related to COVID-19 were logged. However, at this stage, we are unable to link any of these to a published change in clinical policy. Conclusions: Practice in the division was overall deemed to be safe in the designated period, with only 2 COVID-19 related incidents clearly related to a change in pathways and procedures. Continued surveillance and improved metrics for monitoring the impact of changes to pathways and procedures should be sought with the sustained presence of COVID-19 in clinical areas.

Abstract The aim of our study is to analyse the perception of the families and concerned social workers. The research was conducted in an underprivileged and disadvantaged microregion in North Hungary. The main focus was the perception on the available health, educational, child welfare and social services and supports. The starting point was to enquire the target group’s knowledge of these services. The study examines the extent to which social work is able to provide support to disadvantaged, marginalized families with children, and the way how the dysfunctional operation of the system contributes to the perpetuation of the clients’ life conditions. Analysing the quality of these services and supports is crucial to understand the social mobility chance of the children living in this microregion. The results show that without capability and talent development for the children and given the lack of welfare services, the mobility chance and opportunities of these families are extremely low in Hungary.

Background and Objectives: Non-cognitive skills (NCS) are vital components of a socially and financially successful life. They are developed through childhood education, family and school environments, and social settings. The aim of this study was to examine the associations between NCS and the parent–child relationship, mental health, and lifestyle at school and at home for adolescents. Materials and Methods: An internet-based survey was conducted with 1,566 mothers and their children (aged 14) in Japan. Survey items for the children included background (i.e., sociodemographic items, school achievements, and lifestyle), NCS (i.e., grit and self-control scales), and mental health, while their mothers provided social, financial, and educational information, and information on parent–child relationships, including descriptions of the fathers and the father–child relationship. Results: Parent–child relationships were mostly good (i.e., 90.9% for mothers and 75.6% for fathers), with bad relationships being less common (1.6% for mothers and 6.7% for fathers). Adolescent lifestyle parameters and mental health were significantly associated with grit and self-control. Adolescents with good parent–child relationships had significantly higher NCS scores regardless of the gender of the parent. Higher NCS scores were significantly associated with better parent–child relationships, more favorable lifestyles, and better mental health among adolescents. Conclusions: These findings imply that good parent–child relationships may aid in the development of adolescents’ NCS, thereby facilitating positive lifestyles at school and home.

Bird Fancier’s Syndrome is a rare, non-atopic immunologic response to repeated or intense inhalation of avian (bird) proteins/antigens found in the feathers or droppings of many species of birds, which leads to an immune mediated inflammatory reaction in the respiratory system. Although this is the most common type of hypersensitivity pneumonitis reported in adults, it is one of the classification of a rare subtype of interstitial lung disease that occurs in the pediatric age group of which few case reports are available in the literature. The pathophysiology of hypersensitivity pneumonitis is complex; numerous organic and inorganic antigens can cause immune dysregulation, leading to an immune related antigen-antibody response (immunoglobulin G–IgG- against the offending antigen). Diagnosing Bird Fancier’s disease in the pediatric age group is challenging, history of exposure is usually missed by health care providers, symptoms and clinical findings in such cases are nonspecific and often misdiagnosed during the acute illness with other common diseases such asthma, or acute viral lower respiratory tract infection, and the lack of standardization of criteria for diagnosing such condition, or sensitive radiological or laboratory test. Treatment, on the other hand, is also controversial. Avoidance of the offending antigen could be the sole or most important part of treatment, particularly in acute mild and moderate cases. Untreated cases can result in irreversible lung fibrosis. In this case report, we highlight how children presenting with an acute viral lower respiratory tract infection can overlap with hypersensitivity pneumonitis. Early intervention with pulse steroids markedly improves the patient’s clinical course.

This article draws on empirical research seeking to develop more nuanced understandings of child prostitution, previously theorised on the basis of children’s rights, feminist, and structure/agency debates, largely ignoring children’s own understandings of their involvement in prostitution. Conducted in Malawi, one of the economically poorest countries in the world, the study goes to the heart of questions of inequality and child protection. With careful attention to ethical considerations, a participatory approach was used to enable 19 girls and young women, whose involvement in prostitution began in childhood, to convey their own experiences and understandings of involvement. Data were collected using a range of methods, chosen by participants to match their abilities and interests. Data analysis and interpretation were aided by reference to the capability approach focussing on questions of human rights and social justice for women and girls. Generating rare insights into participants’ worlds, the research demonstrates how the persistence of deeply embedded cultural values in contexts of extreme poverty serves to sustain gender inequalities, constraining choices for girls and denying them opportunities to lead valued lives. The article ends by considering the theoretical and methodological implications of the study, policy and practice recommendations and opportunities for further research.

In Kenya, millions of children have limited access to nurturing care. With the COVID-19 pandemic, it is anticipated that vulnerable children will bear the biggest brunt of the direct and indirect impacts of the pandemic. This review aimed to deepen understanding of the effects of COVID-19 on nurturing care from conception to four years of age, a period where the care of children is often delivered through caregivers or other informal platforms. The review has drawn upon the empirical evidence from previous pandemics and epidemics, and anecdotal and emerging evidence from the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. Multifactorial impacts fall into five key domains: direct health; health and nutrition systems, economic, social and child protection, and child development and early learning. The review proposes program and policy strategies to guide the re-orientation of nurturing care, prevent the detrimental effects associated with deteriorating nurturing care environments, and support the optimal development of the youngest and most vulnerable children. These include the provision of cash transfers and essential supplies for vulnerable households, and strengthening of community-based platforms for nurturing care. Further research on COVID-19 and the ability of children’s ecology to provide nurturing care is needed, as is further testing of new ideas.

Child labor remains a predominant issue in Pakistan, despite the country’s existing policies and frameworks aimed at abolishing it. Through this study, we investigated the child labor distribution across Sindh and examined the factors that shape the regional patterns. We analyzed the data available through the 2018-19 Sindh Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, MICS 6, from 20,030 households with 40,633 children in the 5-17 age bracket. By applying prevalence statistics, chi-square tests, and regression modeling to these data, we investigated the trends in child labor prevalence, identified the correlation between child labor and various socioeconomic and geodemographic variables, and finally mapped the geospatial patterns of child labor across districts in Sindh, enabling us to identify and prioritize the districts in need of immediate intervention. The findings revealed that about 20 percent of the children in Sindh are engaged in child labor, with a high prevalence among males and in the 15-17 age bracket. Moreover, poverty and rural dwellings raise this issue. Other socioeconomic and geographic factors reinforcing this issue are lack of education among children, mothers or caretakers, and mothers’ or caretakers’ functional difficulties. However, children’s functional difficulties lower their prevalence in labor. Among the 29 districts across Sindh, Kambar Shahdadkot has the highest prevalence of child labor.

In pediatric burn care, achieving swift healing with minimal complications remains paramount. This investigation assesses polyhexamethylene biguanide (PHMB)'s role in managing superficial partial-thickness burns in children, focusing on the effects of various patient-specific factors on recovery. Through a retrospective analysis of 27 pediatric cases treated with PHMB, we explored the impact of age, burn size, dressing frequency, treatment delay, cold therapy application, and analgesic usage on the duration until reepithelialization. Notably, the majority of patients benefited from early cold therapy, yet only 1 in 3 patients received analgesics. The study reveals a mean healing time of 8.78 days, with the extent of the burn showing a strong correlation to recovery speed. Most treatments were managed outpatient, evidenced by a negligible average hospital stay. Impressively, the intervention recorded no complications. Our findings endorse PHMB as a promising treatment for second-degree burns in young patients, offering healing efficiency on par with or surpassing traditional methods, without increasing complication risks. This investigation underscores the necessity for continued exploration into the optimal application of prehospital interventions and the comprehensive benefits of PHMB in pediatric burn management, advocating for future research aimed at assessing long-term outcomes, including scar quality and patient satisfaction.

Abstract: Few studies have been conducted in Iraq regarding the association of violence at multiple ecological levels and child mental health outcomes. Therefore, the study objectives were 1) to conduct a nationwide analysis to explore violence at multiple socio-ecological levels and children's mental health outcomes, and 2) to identify the most vulnerable children according to the spatial distribution of Iraqi governorates. This cross-sectional study used the 2018 Iraq Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 6), which included 12,358 caregivers who provided complete information regarding their parenting and disciplinary practices regarding their children between the ages of 5 and 14. Logistic regression was employed to examine the factors associated with children’s depression and anxiety. This study showed that 22% of children had depression, while 38% experienced anxiety. Notably, children residing in Iraq's South/Central regions, specifically in areas like Nainawa, Najaf, and Basrah, exhibited notably higher anxiety and depression. The research also showed that living in unsafe neighborhoods, women's acceptance of domestic violence, and the use of severe physical punishment as corporal discipline all contributed to the development of anxiety and depression. This study addresses the scarcity of information on children's mental health outcomes in Iraq at national and governorate levels, emphasizing the need for urgent national-level policy discussions to achieve key Sustainable Development Goals related to ending all forms of violence against children by 2030.

There is currently no set of instruments or procedures to evaluate the effectiveness of cross-sectoral collaboration in the current CFC program. This study aimed to develop a tool for evaluating the cross-sectoral contributions to the CFC program. A paper-based questionnaire was developed by the research team after a preliminary qualitative procedure, and it was subsequently employed to collect data. This process resulted in 17 indicators (41 items) of cross-sectoral collaboration in the development of the CFC in Makassar. These indicators were categorized into five dimensions: governance, administration, autonomy, mutuality, and norms. There were 32 items remaining after several items that were determined not to correspond with the model were eliminated prior to the CFA analysis. According to the CFA results, the five-domain model corresponded to the data with standardized loading factor (SLF)<0.5, indicating that the convergent validity of SLF was acceptable. In addition, these results suggested that the items employed in the tool were really significant in reflecting these five domains. The developed and validated tool was expected to be beneficial in evaluating cross-sectoral collaboration in the CFC program developed in Makassar City. The findings of this study would serve as a benchmark indicator, enabling the assessment process to gauge the significance with which a city is developing with cross-sectoral restriction measures.

Treating clubfoot in walking age children is debated, despite studies showing that using Ponseti casting principles can correct the mid-foot effectively. We aimed to explore techniques and approaches for management of older children with clubfoot and identify areas of management consensus. A mixed-methods cross-sectional electronic survey on delayed presenting clubfoot (DPC) was sent to 88 clubfoot practitioners (response rate 56.8%). We collected data on decision-making, casting, imaging, orthotics, surgery, re-currence, rehabilitation, multidisciplinary care and contextual factors. The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics and the qualitative data were analysed using conventional content analysis. Many respondents used the Pirani score and some used the PAVER score to aid deformity severity assessment and correctability [1,2]. Ponseti casting principles were consistently applied with a stepwise approach. Con-textual factors influenced the timing of the treatment, the decision to treat a bilateral deformity simultaneously, and casting intervals. Differences were seen around orthotic usage and use of tibialis anterior tendon transfer following full correction. The survey identified consensus areas in overall principles of management for delayed presenting clubfoot and implementation of Ponseti principles, indicating these principles are well recognized as a multidisciplinary approach for older children with clubfoot. Some dif-ferences in approach may reflect different economic or social contexts. The principles can be adapted well for different geographical and healthcare contexts.

Background: There is considerable evidence to support the association between environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure and children’s burden of disease. However, literature on the health outcomes of prenatal ETS exposure among Chinese children has not yet been comprehensively reviewed. Objective: This systematic scoping review examines the currently available evidence and identifies gaps for further research on the health consequences of prenatal ETS exposure among Chinese children. Methods: Following the JBI scoping review methodological framework, we conducted a computer-aid search of three electronic databases-- PubMed, EBSCOhost, and ProQuest to include studies from January 2011 to May 2023 that addressed the health outcomes of Chinese children whose mothers were exposed to ETS at any stage of the pregnancy. Further, a methodological quality assessment of the selected articles was conducted, using JBI Critical Appraisal Checklists. Results: A total of 30 articles were reviewed, including eleven high-quality studies and nineteen moderate-quality studies. Five main themes, including hypertension, foetal and children’s development, behavioural disorders, respiratory outcomes, and other health outcomes. Majority of studies showed positive link between prenatal ETS exposure and increase risk of preterm birth, and moderately, foetal growth restriction. Few studies explored other potential adverse outcome of ETS, including hypertension, respiratory morbidity, lung function and asthma in their children. Conclusion: The current available evidence on prenatal ETS exposure in Chinese children has unveiled a wide range of health outcomes, including preterm birth, foetal development, behavioural disorders and much more. However, Chinese studies in this area are still lacking and a gap still exists in relation to the strength of association between prenatal ETS exposure and some health risks. Efficient anti-smoking policies and smoking cessation programs should be developed to promote maternal and child health. Further research is also needed to provide better evidence in this field.

Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a severe personality disorder whose neural bases are still unclear. Indeed, previous studies reported inconsistent findings concerning alterations in cortical and subcortical areas. In the present study we applied for the first time an unsupervised machine learning approach known as mCCA+jICA, in combination with a supervised machine learning approach known as Random Forest, to possibly find covarying GM-WM circuits that separate BPD from controls and that are also predictive of this diagnosis. To this aim, we analyzed the structural images of patients with BPD and matched HCs. Results showed that two GM-WM covarying circuits, including basal ganglia, amygdala, and portions of the temporal lobes and of the orbitofrontal cortex, correctly classified BPD against HC. Notably, these circuits are affected by specific child traumatic experiences (emotional and physical neglect, and physical abuse) and predict symptoms severity in the interpersonal and impulsivity domains. These results support that BPD is characterized by anomalies in GM and WM circuits related to early traumatic experiences and specific symptoms.

Purpose: Perceptual learning and production practice are basic mechanisms that children depend on to acquire adult levels of speech accuracy. In this study, we examined perceptual learning and production practice as they contributed to changes in speech accuracy in three- and four-year-old children. Our primary focus was manipulating the order of perceptual learning and baseline production practice to better understand when and how these learning mechanisms interact. Method: Sixty-five typically-developing children between the ages of three and four were included in the study. Children were asked to produce CVCCVC nonwords like /bozjəm/ and /tʌvtʃəp/ that were described as the names of make-believe animals. All children completed two separate experimental blocks: a baseline block in which participants heard each nonword once and repeated it, and a test block in which the perceptual input frequency of each nonword varied between 1 and 10. Half of the participants completed a baseline-test order; half completed a test-baseline order. Results: Greater accuracy was observed for nonwords produced in the second experimental block, reflecting a production practice effect. Perceptual learning resulted in greater accuracy during the test for nonwords that participants heard 3 or more times. However, perceptual learning did not carry over to baseline productions in the test-baseline design, suggesting that it reflects a kind of temporary priming. Finally, a post hoc analysis suggested that the size of the production practice effect depended on the age of acquisition of the consonants that comprised the nonwords. Conclusions: The study provides new details about how perceptual learning and production practice interact with each other and with phonological aspects of the nonwords, resulting in complex effects on speech accuracy and learning of form-referent pairs. These findings may ultimately help speech-language pathologists maximize their clients’ improvement in therapy.