Weekly Newsletter

FRIDAY, July 13 (HealthDay News) -- Being obese does not affect children's school performance, according to a new British study.

Researchers at the University of York analyzed data from nearly 4,000 participants in the Children of the '90s Birth Cohort Study.

"We sought to test whether obesity directly hinders performance due to bullying or health problems, or whether kids who are obese do less well because of other factors that are associated with both obesity and lower exam results, such as coming from a disadvantaged family," study author Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder said in news release from the United Kingdom's Economic and Social Research Council, which funded the study.

"Based on a simple correlation between children's obesity, as measured by their fat mass, and their exam results, we found that heavier children did do slightly worse in school," Scholder said.

"But when we used children's genetic markers to account for other factors, we found no evidence that obesity causally affects exam results," she said. "So we conclude that obesity is not a major factor affecting children's educational outcomes."

Previous studies have found a link between obesity and poorer grades. These new findings suggest that this may be due to issues that affect both weight and academic performance, including socioeconomic factors such as whether a child's family is poor, Scholder said.

"Clearly there are reasons why there are differences in educational outcomes, but our research shows that obesity is not one of them," she concluded.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more about overweight and obese children.

FRIDAY, July 13 (HealthDay News) -- Infant mortality, preterm births and teen births have dropped across the United States as have violent crime and victimization among children, U.S. health officials reported Friday.

But more children are living in poverty and fewer parents are working in these economically trying times, according to the annual government report assessing the well-being of the nation's children. And the fight against childhood obesity is not making much headway.

"There is good and bad here," Dr. Alan Guttmacher, director of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, said during a Wednesday morning press conference on the report, America's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2012.

"Many of the health indicators continue a good trend, but childhood obesity and childhood asthma continue to be major problems," he said. "Clearly, there are issues in children's health that refer to our present economic situation, and we look forward to improvements in that as well. So I think it's a mixed picture but, overall, I think it's a good one."

On the downside, 10 percent of children don't have health insurance, and many of these children don't have a regular source for health care, he noted.

On the upside, the news on infant mortality, which has been falling for many years.

"This is the all-time low," Edward Sondik, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, said during the press conference.

"We are also encouraged by the fourth consecutive annual drop in the preterm birth rate," Guttmacher added.

Highlights of the report include:

The Bad News

• Obesity rates for kids aged 6 to 17 stood at 18 percent in 2009-2010, down only 1 percent from 2007-2008.
• Asthma rates for those under 17 were virtually unchanged, at 9.4 percent in 2010 versus 9.6 percent in 2009.
• Fewer kids are living with an employed parent: 71 percent in 2010 versus 72 percent in 2009.
• More kids are living in poverty: 22 percent in 2010 compared to 21 percent in 2009. And they're younger: one in four was 5 years old or younger.
• More kids are living are in counties with above allowable air pollution: 67 percent in 2010; 59 percent in 2009.

The Good News

• The teen birth rate dropped to 17 per 1,000 in 2010, from 20 per 1,000 in 2009.
• Preterm birth rate dropped to 12 percent in 2010, from 12.2 in 2009.
• Infant deaths dropped to 6.1 per 1,000 in 2010, from 6.4 per 1,000 births in 2009.
• Fewer kids are living in "food insecure" homes: 22 percent in 2010 versus 23 percent in 2009.
• More kids are being vaccinated with meningitis vaccine: 63 percent in 2010 versus 12 percent in 2006.
• Fewer teens are victims of violent crime: seven in 1,000 in 2010 versus 11 per 1,000 in 2009.
• Fewer kids are living in homes with smokers: 6.1 percent in 2010 versus 8.4 percent in 2005.

"I find this report very encouraging about the present, and very worrisome with regard to the future," said Dr. David Katz, director of the Yale Prevention Research Center at the Yale University School of Medicine.

Most of the actual health measures indicate improvement, he added. "This is testimony to the power of knowledge based on research, and to the benefits of applying what we know from epidemiology to public health in the real world. These are encouraging and gratifying trends," he said.

"But even as health improves, thanks to research conducted and applied, we are raising more children in poverty. Along with the important potential ill effects of poverty in the short-term, there is a potential adverse effect on personal advancement and educational attainment over the longer term," Katz added.

The report showed that in 2011, there were 73.9 million children in the United States, and they made up 24 percent of the population, down from a peak 36 percent at the end of the "baby boom" in 1964.

More information

For more information on children's health, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

THURSDAY, July 13 (HealthDay News) -- A new study suggests that a father's education and training has more to do with whether his son will make the same amount of money than whether his son inherits his wealth.

The research, based on statistics from Sweden, offers more insight into what economists call "human capital" -- the value of people in terms of work based on their various talents and skills. Economists have wondered how much people's human capital is passed down from generation to generation.

"If your goal is to benefit and increase the income in the next generation, the money spent on increasing training and education in the current generation is more effective than just transferring money to people," said study co-author David Sims, an associate professor of economics at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.

Connections between the incomes of fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters and mothers and sons are difficult to establish, Sims said, because researchers go back many generations in search of patterns and women then didn't work as much.

Although the role of women will get more of a focus in the future, he said, the current study looked at the issue at hand in men: Through what channels do fathers transmit their higher or lower income to their children?

The researchers examined 35 percent of boys born in Sweden between 1950 and 1965 and their fathers. They also looked at the incomes of the fathers and sons once the sons were adults.

Although Americans may think of the United States as the land of upward mobility, it is actually more difficult to move out of a family's income level here than in Scandinavian countries, Sims said.

Gary Solon, a professor of economics at Michigan State University in East Lansing, put it this way: "Among rich countries, the United States is not particularly mobile, in the sense that the correlation between parents' and offspring's income is relatively high in our country."

Sims and his colleagues found that a father's education and training were better predictors of a son's income level than factors such as inherited income.

The study didn't factor in genetics, Sims said. "We're not able to distinguish human capital due to genetics versus the change in environment that comes from being better educated."

Solon said the research is important "if you care about income inequality."

"It tells us something we ought to know about the nature of income inequality -- how much difference does it make for economic success if one comes from a rich family versus a poor family?" he said.

The study appears in a recent issue of the Journal of Political Economy.

More information

Kids.gov has more on teaching your kids about money.

THURSDAY, July 12 (HealthDay News) -- Obese women who become pregnant may give birth to babies with low levels of iron, a new study reveals.

The findings suggest that overproduction of an iron-regulating hormone, known as hepcidin, can interfere with the transfer of iron from an obese woman to her unborn child.

Children born with iron deficiency are at greater risk for developmental delays in their motor and thinking skills, the researchers noted.

The study was released online in advance of publication in an upcoming print issue of the Journal of Perinatology.

"The data on the impact of low maternal iron levels on the fetus comes from undernourished populations," the study's first author, Dr. Sarbattama Sen, a neonatologist at Tufts Medical Center and an assistant professor of pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine, said in a university news release. "To the best of our knowledge, ours is the first study to demonstrate that obesity might hamper iron transfer from mother to child and offers some insight into the mechanism of how it occurs."

During pregnancy, a woman's hepcidin levels remain low to improve the transfer of iron to her unborn baby. Obese adults, however, have been shown to produce higher levels of hepcidin than people with a normal weight. Too much of this hormone, the study authors noted, can interfere with the transfer of iron from a mother to her developing fetus.

The research, from the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and The Mother Infant Research Institute at Tufts Medical Center, examined 15 obese pregnant women and 15 pregnant women with a normal weight. The investigators conducted blood tests on the women during their second trimester. They also used cord blood to assess the iron status of their newborns.

Being born to an obese mother with high levels of hepcidin was associated with lower iron status at birth, the researchers found.

"When there is excess hepcidin in a cell, it binds to and inhibits the function of ferroportin, the protein that allows iron to pass through the cell membrane and into the bloodstream," senior study author Simin Nikbin Meydani, director of Tufts' Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, explained in the release.

The study's first author, Maria Carlota Dao, a doctoral student at the center, added: "The chronic low-grade inflammation that can result from being obese triggers an abnormal immune response, increasing production of proteins that increase hepcidin levels."

However, the authors added that more research is needed to investigate the link between obesity and hepcidin levels and the iron status of newborns before any changes are made to the dietary recommendations for obese pregnant women.

"During pregnancy, women should try to eat a varied, healthy diet while taking the standard prenatal vitamins recommended by their doctors," Sen said. "Weight-gain goals should be based on a woman's BMI prior to becoming pregnant." BMI, or body mass index, is a measurement that takes into account height and weight.

While the study found an association between maternal obesity and infants' iron levels, it did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

More information

The American Academy of Family Physicians has more about iron deficiency in infants.