The Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychopathology, part of the UAB Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, is undertaking pioneer research in Catalonia on the prevention and detection of emotional and behavioural disorders among children between the ages of three and six. The results show a high percentage of children in this age group with some kind of psychopathological symptom. [click link for full article]

A study of the use of biomarkers to predict the risk of cardiovascular disease and death in an apparently healthy population has found that, even though some measurements are associated with future cardiovascular events, their usefulness for predicting risk in individuals may be limited. The report from the Framingham Heart Study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine. [click link for full article]

You”d think fish would not have that much on their minds to keep them up at night. But this week, Prober et al. describe transgenic zebrafish with a sleep disorder, a model system that may be useful in studies of sleep regulation. The authors first determined that hypocretin, the best characterized sleep-wake regulator in mammals, is expressed in hypothalamic neurons of 5-d-old zebrafish in a pattern strikingly similar to that of mammals. [click link for full article]

The Food Stamp program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which are primarily funded through the Food and Nutrition Service of the United States Department of Agriculture, have made significant strides toward eliminating nutrition-related health disparities between low-income and higher-income groups. Despite this success, federally-funded nutrition programs have faced criticism for potentially contributing to the nation’s obesity epidemic. [click link for full article]

Within hours of the first reports of devastating floods this weekin the Indonesian province of Aceh, the United Nations World Food Programme(WFP) moved rapidly to deliver emergency supplies by air and road to some127,000 displaced people in the hardest hit districts of Aceh Tamiang andGayo Lues. [click link for full article]

Whether reopening narrowed kidney arteries benefits patients is a $1.7 billion question a North American study hopes to answer.One to three million Americans, most over age 50 and with uncontrolled high blood pressure, have narrowed renal arteries that can reduce kidney function, causing even more blood pressure problems. [click link for full article]

The United Nations Common Air Services (UNCAS) which is managed bythe World Food Programme, resumed humanitarian flights into Somalia onFriday 29 December with a plane leaving Nairobi for Hargeisa in northernSomalia carrying humanitarian workers and cargo. WFP had temporarilysuspended all flights on 27 December.– UNCAS plans another flight on Saturday (30 December) of an aircraftfrom Nairobi to the southern Somali town of Wajid. [click link for full article]

A US study of poorer families has found that Hispanic toddlers are twice as likely to be obese as white or black children. It has also found that in the poorer communities, pre-school obesity it strongly linked to whether the child takes a bottle to bed and whether its mother is obese. [click link for full article]

A study of 200,000 European women has found that doing housework is more likely to protect you against breast cancer than job- or leisure-based physical activity. The study is published in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers & Prevention. [click link for full article]

Replidyne, Inc. (Nasdaq: RDYN), reported today that the current phase III clinical trial comparing faropenem medoxomil (faropenem) to placebo and Ketek (telithromycin) in patients being treated for acute exacerbation of chronic bronchitis (AECB) is being temporarily stopped to consider the exclusion of the Ketek arm in the study. [click link for full article]