Moms of autistic children work less, earn less

By Frederik Joelving | Reuters – Mon, Mar 19, 2012

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – U.S. families with autistic children earn nearly $18,000 less than parents of normally developing kids, according to a new report.

The gap is mainly due to mothers not having a job or working fewer hours, researchers found.

“The needs of children with autism really straddle a number of service systems and there is a tremendous amount of finger pointing in terms of who’s going to pay,” said David Mandell, associate director of the Center for Autism Research at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

“Mothers are leaving the workforce to cobble this care together for their kids,” he added.

Autism spectrum disorders, which range from mild Asperger’s syndrome to severe mental retardation and social disability, affect about one in 110 children in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As more and more kids are diagnosed with the disorders, the nation is grappling with how to pay for the extra care these children need, which may cost as much as $3.2 million over a lifetime.

Mandell said that until now, the impact on individual families in terms of employment and earnings had not been clear.

For the new work, Mandell’s group used data from national household surveys done yearly between 2002 and 2008, including 261 children with autism and more than 64,000 without health problems.

After accounting for factors such as parents’ age, race, education and health, fathers of kids with autism were just as likely to be employed as fathers of typically developing children. The same was true for how much fathers worked and earned.

For mothers, however, there was a marked difference. Compared with mothers of kids without disabilities, those who had autistic children were six percent less likely to be employed, worked seven hours less per week and had less than half the annual income.

All told, households with autistic children earned $17,763 less a year.

The researchers couldn’t say for sure that the gap is caused by having a child with autism. But Mandell said today’s system means families have to shuttle their kids between several different providers.

“I think it’s a case of the mother becoming the case manager and the advocate for the child,” he told Reuters Health. “If these kids were appropriately cared for it wouldn’t be such a burden for the family.”

Guillermo Montes, a researcher at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York, said the new study shows families with children with autism make different financial decisions than others.

“By putting their kids first, these decisions result in lower and more unstable family income,” Montes, who was not involved in the new work, told Reuters Health by email.

“State legislatures, employers and the federal government have to engage these families in a conversation about how to best assist them,” he added. “Any assistance must preserve work flexibility and the wide variety of work and care arrangements which are key to achieve a work-family balance that works for kids with autism, their siblings and their parents.”

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, March 19, 2012.

Kids Using Synthetic Pot a Growing Public Health Concern

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter | HealthDay – Mon, Mar 19, 2012

MONDAY, March 19 (HealthDay News) — The recent advent of so-called “synthetic pot” is a rising public health concern, researchers warn, sending kids to the emergency room and prompting parental calls to poison control centers.

The concoction was originally conceived in a laboratory setting as a research aid for animal studies involving THC, a key stimulative ingredient in marijuana, the new report noted.

But purely recreational street use of this widely varying mix of plants and herbal ingredients is growing. It’s widely available and is currently undetectable by commercial drug tests.

“The concern is that we’re going to really see this grow in popularity,” said study author Dr. Joanna Cohen, an assistant professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at Children’s National Medical Center, in Washington, D.C. “Because it’s really easy to get, and because kids know that it doesn’t come back on typical clinically useful urine drug screenings that we would use in an ER.”

According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, roughly 4,500 calls have come in since 2010 regarding toxicity stemming from synthetic marijuana use.

The new study appears online March 19 and in the April issue of Pediatrics.

Commonly referred to by a host of street names — such as “K2,” “Spice” and “Aroma” — synthetic pot isn’t made according to a fixed recipe and can differ from lab to lab and batch to batch.

The resulting product often includes some combination of blue and pink lotus, red clover, honey, vanilla, bay bean and marshmallow.

The blend — which can be ingested either orally or via smoke inhalation — is sprayed with chemicals that render the composition toxic.

Until recently, these synthetic mixtures were legal to purchase and readily available in corner stores and gas stations throughout the United States and on the Internet. In February, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency classified synthetic marijuana as a controlled substance.

That, Cohen cautioned, has done little to slow its popularity.

And because of it’s strong impact on cannabinoid brain receptors, as little as 1 milligram of synthetic marijuana can be intoxicating, the study said. The impact can be stronger than that with naturally grown marijuana, sometimes prompting bouts of paranoia, anxiety, agitation, high blood pressure, profuse sweating, palpitations, irritability, muscle rigidity and, at times, convulsions.

The researchers noted that when users seek medical attention, the varied composition of synthetic pot can make it hard to quickly pinpoint the most dangerous ingredient.

Individual symptoms are usually short-lived, the researchers said, and treatment is available to help control some of the reactions.

In their report, Cohen and her team describe three case examples of teenaged patients who were hospitalized after using the drug, one girl and two boys.

Overall, the patients demonstrated varying degrees of catatonia, an inability to respond to verbal or physical stimulation — including pain — an elevated heart rate, agitation and anxiety, dizziness, headaches, excessive sweating, slowed speech, and confusion.

Two of the patients recovered normal function in three to four hours, while the third patient was kept in hospital overnight before being released.

“What’s important with this is that parents and schools are aware that this is out there,” Cohen said. “And that they look for signs and symptoms of use. If you see a teen who’s agitated, sweating a lot, or acting abnormally in some way it could, of course, be a sign of a serious medical problem, or it could be a sign of drug toxicity. Either way you need to seek medical attention right away.”

“The long-term the goal should be to prevent repeat use,” she added, “because these kids are kids. They’re teenagers and their brains are still developing. So there can be long-term effects, like psychosis and memory loss, from the use of something like synthetic marijuana.”

Steven Shoptaw, a clinical psychologist and a professor in the department of family medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggested that while current concerns surrounding synthetic pot use have some merit, they are dwarfed by the enormous popularity of real marijuana among teens.

“Because [synthetic marijuana] is a relatively new drug, the surveys that measure and monitor drug use in children over time haven’t had a chance to look at this yet, so we don’t know how big a problem this is across the country,” he said.

“But what we do know is that the prevalence of marijuana use among eighth, ninth and tenth graders is very, very high,” Shoptaw said. “And I would say that that’s a much greater problem than ‘Spice’ use. Marijuana is actually way more available to teens, and it is very rich in potent THC. And that, as the authors point out, can pose a lot of problems for developing brains.”

More information

For more on marijuana, synthetic and “natural,” visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine.

Electronic Diary Helped Obese Adults Stick to Weight-Loss Plan

HealthDay – Thu, Mar 15, 2012

THURSDAY, March 15 (HealthDay News) — An electronic diary program helped improve overweight and obese adults’ adherence to a weight-loss regimen, according to a new study.

The study included 210 overweight or obese adults who were asked to keep track of aspects of weight-loss treatment such as attendance at group sessions and energy and exercise goals.

The participants kept track using either a paper diary, a personal digital assistant (PDA) without feedback, or a PDA with a program that provided personalized dietary and exercise feedback messages.

The participants who received the feedback messages (one per day on diet and one every other day on exercise) were more successful in attending group sessions, meeting daily calorie goals, meeting daily fat-intake goals, reaching weekly exercise goals and monitoring their eating and exercise.

After six months, people in the group that received feedback messages saw weight loss of more than 5 percent. After 24 months, however, weight loss was similar in all three groups, according to the study, which is scheduled to be presented Thursday at an American Heart Association (AHA) meeting in San Diego.

“The results suggest that using an electronic diary improves treatment adherence,” study author Lora Burke, a professor of nursing and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, said in an AHA news release.

“Over time, participants’ adherence declined, particularly in the later phase as contact frequency declined and subsequently ended,” she said. “Adherence in the paper-diary group declined more than in the device groups.”

Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases has more about weight loss.