This post collects together the precis of the major articles - perspectives, leading articles and original articles - in the June 2008 issue.

Perspectives

Cardiorespiratory measurements

Ekelund asks if we are measuring the right thing when we attempt to measure children’s physical fitness. Here.

Medicines

Choonara looks at the recent moves by the World Health Organisation to improve safety in children’s medicines. Here.

Leading Articles

Loss to follow up in studies

Fewtrell and colleagues discuss how much loss to follow up is acceptable in studies. Here.

Infantile spasms

Desguerre, Nabbout and Dulac review the current management of infantile spasms. Here.

Original articles

6 Minute Walk Test

328 normal children aged 4 to 11 were used to generate normal values for this test which can be used to assess exercise capacity in children with cardiac or respiratory disease. Here.

Obesity prevention

An intervention involving teaching healthy eating, reduced TV and increased activity which is known to have an impact in the US also had an impact in a pilot study on English children aged 9-10. Here.

Strep Pharyngitis

In a series of 353 New Zealand schoolchildren with group A β-hemolytic streptococcus pharyngitis, a regime of once daily amoxycillin was of equivalent efficacy to a twice daily regime of penicillin in treatment failure and other complications. Here.

Infant Illness in the Developing World

In a series of 452 infants in an south Indian slum, 391 were followed during their first year of life, during which infants suffered an average of 12 illnesses, with a high burden of respiratory and gastrointestinal illness, and spent on average 20% their lives ill. Here.

Injury epidemiology

Rates for all sorts of serious injuries suffered by children across England were closely related to socio-economic status, but vary with social setting. Here.

Pneumonia

In 251 Bangladeshi children with severe and very severe pneumonia 93% were successfully treated using a day care facility with parents providing night time ongoing care. Here.

Surgery for congenital heart defects

Of 80 Norwegian children who died more than 30 days following surgery for congenital heart defects, a large number had a significant fall in weight after surgery. Here.

Obesity in pre-school children

In an cohort of 4934 Australian pre-school children, 15% were overweight and 5% were obese, but relatively few had additional morbidity as a consequence. Here.

Hearing screening

Six months after a false positive result on a hearing screening test, parents of 154 children showed no more general anxiety about health than controls, although some retained significant concerns about hearing. Here.

Vitamin D and Type 1 Diabetes

A systematic review of the evidence for Vitamin D supplementation in infancy and the subsequent development of type 1 diabetes suggests that supplementation may have a protective effect which may be dose related. Here.

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